


just once to be lifted strong

by The_Blonde



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Library, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Orchestra, Books, M/M, Mutual Pining, Phandom Reverse Bang 2018, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-04-23 06:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14326140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blonde/pseuds/The_Blonde
Summary: "Maybe it is random. Maybe the lynx was just the next one waiting in line for its human and that human had happened to be Dan, awkwardly manoeuvring his way around the outskirts of situations while it prowled at his side. Or maybe it represented some inner part of Dan, golden and glowing, hidden somewhere amongst all the shadows, something that he could get to if he actually looked. Dan’s more inclined to go with the first one (though he’d considered the second one numerous times. It just wasn’t possible)."Or: Dan is a boy with a missing anima. He finds a Phil instead.





	just once to be lifted strong

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for and inspired by the wonderful [hunnyhowlter](http://www.hunnyhowlter.tumblr.com) and her gorgeous gorgeous art. Go and admire it all on her blog! Hopefully this fic lives up to her lovely idea! Huge thanks to [insectbah](http://www.insectbah.tumblr.com) for being the most patient and encouraging beta. Any good parts in this are because of them. 
> 
> Title from "The Days" by Patrick Wolf.

_“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"_  
_"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...”  
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden_  


\---

Thursdays are drawing days (second only to poetry days in the ranking of his least favourite therapy activities). Dan waits until all of the good colouring pencils have been taken and then gestures to the leftovers, as if to say _I can’t draw with these_ , as if this isn’t the same thing he does every Thursday, as if Cornelia isn’t just going to cluck her tongue against her teeth and say _you’ll have to make do_. As if, one day, he’ll finally get to complete whatever never-ending course this is and leave. Dan isn’t sure how you leave but he imagines there’s a certificate and possibly a graduation ceremony where he gets to pretend that he’s now a well adjusted person because he drew pictures and wrote poetry for his missing anima (stolen, he corrects. His stolen anima).

He gestures to the leftover pencils. Cornelia clucks her tongue. “You’ll just have to make do with those Dan.”

All of the drawings go on the wall. Dodie, who always sits in the seat next to Dan, has created a hundred multicoloured peacock drawings, each brighter than the last. There’s a bear, a fox and an owl, the same animas over and over in different poses and with different expressions. Dan’s drawings stand out for the lack of colour and artistry, and the fact that it’s impossible to tell what his anima even was (is, he corrects. What his anima is).

“I thought we could put your drawing in the centre this time,” Cornelia says, encouragingly. 

Dan writes _Dan Howell: 26 and ¾_ in the bottom corner of his paper. “That’s okay, thanks.”

“And I thought that, maybe, you could share your story with us at the start of our discussion later. If you feel that you could-”

Dan says, “No, thank you,” as politely as he can manage. Discussion, with its horseshoe chair layout and oversharing and gentle applause after each story, exists outside of the least favourite therapy activity list because he, mostly, pretends that it’s not happening. He does what he’s supposed to, and listens and nods and claps, but four months in and he’s still the only one that hasn’t sat on the little green chair in the centre of the horseshoe and told his story.

Cornelia calls them _stories_. Tell us your story, let’s hear your story, Dan do you feel ready to tell your story. Cornelia has a melodic voice that, he imagines, usually gets people to open up to her. Not him. It’s not a story, he wants to say, it was a real thing. It happened. If it was just a _story_ then Dan wouldn’t still hold his hand out to pat the top of his head, to pull at his ears, to whisper to him, to whistle and make sure he was still close, even though he always was. Until the last time, that is. He wasn’t a story.

“A cat?” Dodie guesses, watching him draw. She always guesses a cat, everyone in the room guesses a cat. Dan deliberately gets the ears and tail all wrong. “Or a tiger? But you don’t seem like you would have had a tiger.”

Dodie doesn’t seem like she would have had a peacock either. She wears a lot of grey sweatshirts that completely cover her hands and huge glasses. All of the colour gets added to her peacock (golds and greens and blues) and was apparently stolen when he was (Dodie used to play music and the peacock would sit in her empty guitar case while she did shows. One day she stepped offstage to find both guitar case and peacock gone. The grey started then). 

“Neither of those,” Dan replies. 

“But in the cat family?” Dodie takes his silence as a potential yes. “I’m just going to keep saying feline related things now. A panther? A leopard?”

“I’m not going to tell you if you’re right.”

“Of course you’re not. I know you wouldn’t.” Dodie pours an entire waterfall of green glitter over the fan of her peacock’s tail. “You might feel better if you talked about it though. That’s the whole point of being here, isn’t it?”

“I thought it was the poetry.”

Dodie raises one eyebrow over the crater of her ridiculous glasses and says, “A lion? Some particular breed of cat? A persian, I could see you with a persian.”

Dan shakes his head. “Not a persian.”

They have one-to-one time with Cornelia, an assigned two hours every week where they sit together in one of the little rooms off the main entrance and pretend that they’re friends meeting for coffee. Cornelia even says _hi Dan, thank you for joining me_ like it’s a happy coincidence that they both happen to be in this place together and that Dan isn’t just a participant in the Coping With The Unexpected Loss of Your Anima class that Cornelia runs. Dan’s aware that Cornelia has to pretend harder than usual with him. He’s not the easiest person in the world to try and make polite conversation with. 

“I could see you with a persian,” Dodie repeats. “Because you’re sometimes grumpy and don’t seem to like people very much.”

Sometimes is being generous, but Dodie is a fairly generous person. Her peacock is a shimmering green masterpiece. Dan’s pencil drawn monstrosity could be any animal in the world. 

Cornelia makes notes when they talk or really, when she talks and tries to get Dan to answer questions genuinely. He never does. Cornelia has the patience of a saint and will say _Why are you always sarcastic about things you like?_ and Dan will reply _Am I?_ with sarcasm iced over every letter.

Dodie’s peacock is given pride of place in the centre of the wall and Dodie gets pride of place in discussion time. “It didn’t actually have that much green,” she says. “But we only had green glitter. It used to change colour sometimes, like it’d be bluer if I was sad, or more purple if I was happy. When I played the guitar it would chirp and it used to squawk when people heckled me. I thought that, maybe, the people who took him were people that it’d squawked at, but - I don’t. They’re not much good to anyone else, are they? I don’t see the point of - I don’t think that it turns blue if _they’re_ sad.” Dodie gestures weakly to the drawing. A lot of the glitter has fallen off. “But, anyway, it didn’t - it wasn’t very green.”

Cornelia says, “Thank you Dodie,” and they all gently applaud, little raindrop sounding claps, as she walks to her seat. “Dan, would you like to-”

Dan pauses with his hands still centimetres apart. “No, thank you. Maybe next time?”

Dan’s said _maybe next time?_ since he joined. He’s said things accidentally, but immediately backtracked like he always does when something comes out sounding too real and he feels guilty about it. He feels guilty about a lot of things, about everything, but therapy is something that pokes at his heart because he  knows that he should be taking it seriously. Cornelia is nice. His group is nice. The general idea of coming together to talk with other people who have lost the very thing that understands them the most is nice. It’s just that Dan has never found a genuinely nice thing that he couldn’t ruin.

Cornelia has the grace to look disappointed. “Next time then!”

There had been one conversation, a brief moment in one-to-one time, where she’d caught him on a bad day, an honest day that Dan will deny afterwards like he denies all accidental bearings of his soul, but he’d seen someone with a lynx on the tube. White instead of gold and Dan had stared and stared, which was terrible anima etiquette and he knew it, they just looked so similar. He’d arrived at one-to-one almost breathless with the feeling of loss, coiling up around his chest into his throat, and said, _It was my fault. But you know that. They must give you, like, a case file or something when we get referred here_. Cornelia looked astonished. Dan, saying the words for the first time aloud rather than shouting them in his head, repeated, _It was my fault_. Cornelia, when she regathered her senses, said, _It wasn’t your fault_ but she was meant to say that. Everyone had said that. Repeatedly.

Dan, the only person who was actually there at the time, knows that it isn’t true. 

Cornelia had probably thought that was a breakthrough, that it was the moment they could finally start talking and it would end with Dan painting a perfect lynx and writing a poem that he could read aloud at discussion time. It wasn’t. Dan’s greatest talent is rebuilding walls as quickly as he knocks them down. Cornelia said _It wasn’t your fault_ and he said _What wasn’t? I don’t know what I’m talking about, sorry_ and they never mentioned it again. 

(Dodie guessed a lynx once, in one of the early sessions. Touched her hand right to the smudged line of a paw and guessed, “A lynx!” Dan has always gone out of his way to make the ears look different after that).

\---

“So, how was therapy?” PJ mumbles, unwinding the tuning peg of his violin. His voice is half lost under the noise of fifty people all tuning their instruments but PJ, as the only person in the orchestra who knows about Dan’s whereabouts from nine until eleven, knows it’s a question that can only be asked in a whisper. “Is it getting better?”

“I don’t think it’s a thing that gets _better_.” Dan tightens one of his strings. The violin doesn’t even need it but he has to get the tension out of his fingers somehow. “It was Thursday, which is drawing day. You know I hate drawing days.”

“You hate all the days,” PJ clarifies. 

Dan says, “Not true,” but weakly, because it _is_ true. “I just - I don’t see the point. Nothing’s going to change. It can’t. I tried everything. There’s just not a lot of things to try. You know that, you were _there_.”

PJ sighs, much as he had on the numerous apothecary visits, the constant calls to the police, the neverending appointments at libraries and town halls and cold emotionless offices while Dan told the same story multiple times and waited and waited. Everywhere except the libraries, the libraries were for research, to see if it’s possible to claim another anima. Or for another anima to claim you. _One comes to you when you’re born_ was Dan’s logic. _One shows up then. What if they just know that you’ve lost - what if they know you’re missing one. Can another one find you? Can that happen?_ It turned out that it very much can’t. That’s never stopped Dan from throwing open his flat door every morning and hoping beyond all hope, a hope as close to snapping as his violin string, that something would be there. 

At the orchestra everyone’s animas have to stay in the lobby area. It makes it easier. Dan leaves by the back entrance and avoids the glorious reunion of humans and animas separated by two hours. He’s only seen PJ’s anima, a sweet little robin that normally perches on the tips of PJ’s curls, once in the past few months. PJ, who feels everything very deeply, like other people’s emotions are somehow also his own, said _I’m sorry_ and now Dan thinks that the robin is ordered to PJ’s jacket pocket whenever he sees Dan outside of work. 

“You could try the therapy,” PJ suggests. “I mean, actually try it. You don’t know if it’s actually helpful or not.” 

“I try it five times a week.”

“I meant to actually participate.”

“I don’t do audience participation, it’s the -”

“It’s not an audience though, it’s people who’ve been through the same thing as you.”

“Going through,” Dan corrects, softly. “People who are _going through_ the same thing as me.”

“I didn’t mean -”

“I know. It’s fine. _I’m_ fine.” 

PJ looks doubtful. “I don’t think either of those things are fine, Dan. And you should draw it properly, even if you don’t see the point. Talking to people about it would help, you know, rather than just keeping everything in here.” He presses his palm to the blush pink of his sweater and opens his fingers over his heart. “If you keep doing that it’s just going to burst.”

It’s difficult to try and keep things in a heart that isn’t fully formed anymore but Dan nods, appreciating the effort, and reaches down for his bow. They’re rehearsing for a suite of work by a new composer who hasn’t come to introduce himself to the orchestra yet, but based on sheet music alone, apparently hates the entire brass section as much as he loves never-ending adagios. Dan’s wrists and hands ache from the effort of playing so slowly (he doesn’t usually dislike adagios but this one builds and builds into nothing).

Dan has played it all the way through numerous times (with PJ, always first violin to his second, perched on his right hand side) and even he’s still waiting for it to be different, for it to actually go somewhere. And it’s untitled. 

“I hate him”, PJ says, not for the first time. “We haven’t met him yet and I hate him.” He pats his hand to the ringlets at his fringe and then stops mid-motion, realising that his anima isn’t there. 

The animas didn’t always have to stay in the lobby. They used to come to the rehearsals and to the shows (one of the cellists has a chubby legged shetland pony that always, without fail, would start eating one of Dan’s spare bows). They’re in the lobby, he knows, because of him. However much everyone tried to sell it as a general choice, that it was easier without the animals jumping off things and into things, he knows it’s to try and make him feel better. It does and also doesn’t. 

“We’re not being given the title for another two weeks,” PJ continues, trying to style out the accidental pat into a tidying of his hair. “Why? I need to know the theme, you know themes are important to me.”

“There can’t even be a theme,” Dan says. “It just goes and goes over the same thing and doesn’t change.”

PJ makes a _hmmmm_ noise and raises his eyebrows.

“I’m talking about the music.”

“Of course. Then you won’t mind me saying that the _music_ can’t keep on the way that it is. It should have more percussion.”

“More percussion,” Dan states.

“Just like some tambourines. Or a timpani.”

PJ repeats this after rehearsal (when the actual percussion section had sat sadly behind their drums and glockenspiels because the composer hasn’t written any music for them but insisted that they all remain on stage), his hand on Dan’s upper arm and his tone so earnest that he loses the metaphor halfway and just says, “You should have more percussion. I’d like you to.”

The orchestra are walking right, through the main doors. Dan is walking left, over the stage and through the back exit. He says, “I know you do, Peej,” pats weakly at PJ’s hand and steps away before he can hear all the happy noises of animas realising that their humans are back.

\---

Dan takes the tube with his violin case under his arm and his gaze directed down at his feet. He’s taken the tube this way for months, the only exception being the white lynx incident (he’d been tired that day, more so than usual, and not concentrating). It’s easy in a place like London where no one likes to make eye contact with anyone and it’s almost encouraged to make yourself anonymous. Dan stares at the laces of his shoes against the train floor, the platform concrete, the steps and then, eventually, the light-reflecting puddles on the street outside.

Everything is still covered in half-melted grey snow. The melting process seems to have taken weeks and it makes all of the pavements slippery. Dan had liked snow, once, being in possession of an anima that loved wintery conditions and bouncing around in snow drifts, but it now makes him lose his step and bump against the shoulders of everyone walking in the opposite direction. Birds chirp. A lion roars. There’s the mournful sound of an elephant from the other side of the street. A whole chorus of cicadas. Dan sighs and doesn’t look at any of them.

The pavement beneath his feet eventually becomes the bright green carpet of the library. It clashes horribly with the dark pine of the shelves and tables. Dan kicks snowflakes from his heels and looks up. 

Phil, in the middle of lighting five cinnamon scented candles, says, “You’re late!” He waves to Dan with a still lit match in his hand. “I wasn’t sure if you were coming. I saved your desk.”

Dan’s Desk is against the very back wall and half hidden by a cabinet of Elizabethan romances that no one ever comes to read. “Rehearsal took longer than usual, everyone hates the music we’re doing.” Dan watches the flame fly around Phil’s head. “Could you put that out? You’re gonna set fire to your hair.” He doesn’t have much optimism in Phil’s spacial awareness.

Phil says, “Right, sorry,” and blows it out. He gestures to the candles. “I wanted to place these around before you got here but I got distracted, so - You said you liked the smell of cinnamon. Last time. Or maybe some time before that, I can’t remember, but, uh - is it still the music that doesn’t use half of the orchestra?”

Dan had said he liked the smell of cinnamon three weeks ago. Just enough time for Phil to buy an entire shops worth of scented candles. Phil, with over rehearsed casualness, leans over the check-in desk, but there’s a hopeful question in his eyes, like Dan might say _you remembered, that’s amazing, thank you_ , like he probably did in Phil’s head when Phil imagined how this was going to go.

Dan says, “Yep. The music that only uses half the orchestra but makes the other half sit on stage with us in silence.” A tiny spark of something goes out of Phil’s expression. “I - Thanks for keeping my desk free.” 

Phil smiles (Phil’s smile is something to behold usually, every one looks like the first time he’s ever done it, this one does not look like that). “That’s okay. I always will. Here, take a candle with you.”

Dan walks to his desk carrying a little glass pot of rust coloured candle in his hands and feels guilty for making Phil’s smile look like that. He wants to run back and say _No, I mean, thank you. Thank you for remembering what I said_. He looks back over his shoulder and watches Phil hold his arm up to the one of the shelves to let his anima, a snow weasel, run down and across his shoulders. 

Snow weasels and lynxes exist in the same environment, Dan had read about it. They get along and can live happily together. He sometimes pictures him and Phil, sat on a park bench, rose-tinted summertime, animas at their feet, happy (but that’s just a picture. Dan hasn’t been happy for a while. Phil would try to make him so. Dan is very aware of this. He sees the blush across Phil’s cheekbones when he comes into the library. The Dan of last year would have done something about that).

\---

Dan stops by the library every day on his way back from work. He still isn’t sure when it progressed from liking the library’s quietness and its closeness to his apartment into actually delaying going home so that he can spend the remaining hours of his day at a desk hidden from the rest of the room by a bookshelf no one comes to. Or that’s a lie, he’s absolutely sure of when it progressed. It progressed when he met Phil.

Dan doesn’t hate his apartment but it now lacks his anima and so lacks any sense of home or belonging that it once possessed. All of Dan’s belonging got stolen when his anima did. The library is too stern to evoke any of those feelings, the dark pine and the ancient books seem to tell Dan that he can stay here but not too long. He’s fine with that. He’s done with trying to search for places that he could, potentially, feel at home in. Searching for things that are impossible is tiring and pointless. He likes that no one in the library looks at each other, no one has ever looked at his feet or up into his hair, trying to work out where his anima could be (a mouse hiding in his curls? A bird stationed up in one of the shelves?). Dan’s been coming to the library every day, every evening, for months and he doesn’t think any of the other desk occupiers have even noticed that he’s there. 

Phil is the exception to many things and is, especially, the exception to people noticing Dan. Dan has never felt more noticed by anyone. The first time he entered the library when Phil was there (rather than the other librarian, Chris, who has a pigeon anima and hasn’t made eye contact with Dan once) Phil had upended a trolley filled with leatherbound copies of The Canterbury Tales and made a noise somewhere between a gasp (like he and Dan had made plans to meet, right here, and he was amazed that Dan had actually showed up) and a sad _oh!_ (at the realisation that, no, Dan didn’t have a tiny anima hidden somewhere on his person, that he didn’t have one at all).

Phil, Dan has come to realise, is a very poor librarian. The Chaucer hit the floor one by one, a domino line of thuds, and Phil said, “Hello. Sorry about that.”

The snow weasel was looped around his neck, watching Dan with interest. Dan shook his head. “It’s fine. They usually save a desk for me? At the back, I’m not sure if - it’s fine if they haven’t, I can -”

“No, it’s okay.” Phil smiled. When he did so the snow weasel leant back, like it was basking in the glow of it. Dan almost did too. “Chris told me about you.”

The heaviest book reached the floor with a smack rather like the one Dan felt, cold, in his heart. He and Chris had never spoken. He might have told Phil _there’s this one guy, with no anima, have you ever seen someone with no anima, what do you think happened? He sits on the back desk and reads through all our anima history collection, by himself. As by himself as it’s possible to be, sometimes he -_

“He told me to save you the desk,” Phil continued. “And to bring you the anima encyclopedias. Are you reading through them?” Dan nodded. Phil looked astonished. “ _All_ of them? Why?”

Dan made a vague gesture around and over himself, signalling all of the empty space. “Well.”

Phil said, “Oh,” and Dan waited for the usual questions. How had it happened, where had it gone, had he never had one in the first place, that happened sometimes, Dan had read about it in the first volume (a one in a thousand chance), the reason, the gossip. Dan waited and Phil said, “I’ll bring them. When I’ve tidied up all of this.” He looked sad, like he knew Dan had lost something and wished he had some way to bring it back. 

Dan, out of habit, said, “Sorry.”

Phil, confused, replied, “Why?”

Dan gets less questions in the library because they don’t encourage talking. Dan is very much down with not encouraging talking. Phil absolutely encourages talking and chatting and laughing and things that make him get shushed when he should be doing the shushing himself. It took him a long time to wheel the encyclopedias over because he spoke to _everyone_ , hands flying and eyes wide. Dan traced the wood grain in the desktop with his fingertip until Phil finally arrived, with volumes G-I and J-L. He’d removed the snow weasel from his neck.

“I’m Phil.” Phil put both books in front of Dan. “I should have said that first. I’m the new librarian. I started last week but I think - I was working mornings then, I think we kept missing each other. But I’m working evenings now, so - I think I’m a bit too loud for the mornings. I don’t like quiet very much.”

“You realise you work in a library?”

Phil shrugged.

“I love the quiet,” Dan replied, without elaborating, and pulled volume G-I closer. 

“What are you looking for in there?”

Dan opened the front cover. A film of dust burst into the air, held for a second, and then scattered. “I don’t know.”

“But you’ve read from A to G already.”

“And I couldn’t find anything.”

Phil said, “We have some books, some newspaper articles and diaries and stuff, about people who’ve lost animas, I could get -”

Dan shook his head. “It isn’t lost.”

“But -”

“It isn’t _lost_. And if Chris told you about me then he should have said that I don’t really talk about - I don’t talk about anything, I come here to _avoid_ talking. It’s a  library.”

Phil (and Dan has, the past few months, relived every inch of hesitation in his tone) said, “Right, okay. I - I’ll leave G-I and J-L here. If that’s - I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to -”

People had apologised to Dan a lot (a _lot_ ), variations on a theme, but Phil was the first person to sound vaguely like he meant it. Not even vaguely, actually, like he meant it with every fibre of his being. The snow weasel, left on the counter, put its head in its paws. 

People had apologised to Dan a lot and he’d been sarcastic and snappy with almost all of them, was in a constant state of wanting to catch his words in mid-air and push them back into his mouth, but with Phil he’d wanted to rewind time and smash every syllable like they’d never even existed. He meant to say _I’m sorry too_ but said, “I’m Dan,” instead, like that meant anything.

“I know,” Phil replied, gently. “Chris told me about you. He left a note. Two notes, actually. He had a lot to say about you.”

“I don’t think there’s much to say about me at all.”

\---

Dan is on volume Q-S now. He’d had high hopes for this one in particular, because it would include Rescue and Recovery and Retrieving and Reunion. He’d written all of them in his notebook with their own individual pages ready to go. They were still blank. Much like Finding and Locating and Discovering were still blank. Dan runs a fingertip over Searching (always) and inhales the cinnamon from his candle. Phil has lit far too many of them, filling an entire room with a smell Dan had only briefly mentioned liking. Dan keeps finding more, stationed in the shelves, on some of the other desks. He says, “I don’t feel great about having this many candles around all the wood,” to Phil, who is loitering near Dan’s Desk with the book trolley.

“I’ll remember to put them out,” Phil replies. He pushes the trolley back and forth. “I like them, don’t you?”

Dan has the distinct impression that if he said no Phil would smash every candle in the library to the ground and then never buy another one ever again. “They’re fine. They’re just a massive fire hazard.”

“I’ll remember,” Phil repeats. “Besides, you’re always the last one here, you can remind me.” Dan smiles weakly, Phil smiles brilliantly back. “You’re up to S.”

“I skipped to S, I’m going to go back to R.”

“Why?”

“Because R has most of what I’m looking for. I think.”

“What have you found so far?”

The answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Beyond a guy in the Highlands who lost his seal anima and then, a year later, found it happily alive on the shore beneath his house, and also a woman who claimed to have two animas, but that was surely a lie. Dan had written them both down anyway. They were the only two entries in his notes and Phil must know this, for how much time he spends staring at Dan and how little time Dan actually spends writing. Dan curls his hand protectively around the corner of his notebook. “A few things.”

“Can I help?”

Dan has various answers prepared for this question. He forgets all of them and says, “I don’t think you could.”

Phil frowns. All of Phil’s expressions are amplified; he clasps his hands to his cheeks when he’s surprised, pushes out his bottom lip when he’s sad, like he’s acting out the emotions to someone trying to guess how he’s feeling. His frown is a crinkle of his nose, a lowering of his eyebrows. “I could try.”

“I’m looking for something that isn’t possible,” Dan says. “I think. And I said I’d stop doing that but here I am. I won’t know until I get to Z but what if I get to Z and it isn’t there?”

“Looking for impossible things sounds tiring,” Phil observes. 

“I’ve been doing it for a while.” 

Dan has learnt a lot of useless facts about animas (not that he’s written any of those down): the experiments to see how far the bond can be stretched, whether your anima feels your emotions, if your anima is actually any kind of reflection of your personality or if it’s just random. Dan wonders if his parents, finding a lynx cub on their doorstep just after they’d brought their dimple cheeked baby home, had thought that he’d grow up to be brave, sociable, loyal, the leader of his pack, when in fact he had managed possibly one of those things. 

Maybe it is random. Maybe the lynx was just the next one waiting in line for its human and that human had happened to be Dan, awkwardly maneuvering his way around the outskirts of situations while it prowled at his side. Or maybe it represented some inner part of Dan, golden and glowing, hidden somewhere amongst all the shadows, something that he could get to if he actually looked. Dan’s more inclined to go with the first one (though he’d considered the second one numerous times. It just wasn’t possible).

Phil drums his fingers lightly across the encyclopedia cover. “We’re closing up, Dan.” He’s wearing a star print coat, a Hufflepuff scarf and carrying a bag with a different star print. Every aspect of him clashes. 

Dan registers that the candles are all out. The cinnamon is still heavy in the air. “But I only just got here.”

“You’ve been here for three hours,” Phil replies. “Mostly staring into space but, here.” He watches Dan close his notebook. “Good searching?”

Dan shrugs. He knows he’s going to get to Stealing soon, an entry that he’s in no way prepared for. Skipping to S suddenly seems like a terrible idea. “Same as usual.”

Phil says, “Can I help?” again, more gently than he’d said it last time. “I’m good at looking for things. Even when they’re impossible.”

Dan pushes his hands into his gloves, loops his scarf once around his neck. “It’s - I don’t really know what I’m looking for. Can you save the desk for me again tomorrow?”

He asks this every evening and every evening Phil makes the same shocked expression (eyes wide and eyebrows slightly raised, telegraphing _I am amazed by what you just said_ ). “Of course. It’s your desk.”

They part at the doors, Dan watching Phil struggle with the multiple locks while the snow weasel watches from his bag, a long-suffering look on its face. Dan says, “Thank you for the candles.”

Phil drops one of the padlocks that he’s unsuccessfully trying to fix to the door. “Sorry?”

“The candles,” Dan repeats. “Thank you. I didn’t think you’d remember what I said, but -”

“I would,” Phil says. “I did.”

The padlock has landed in one of the half iced over puddles. Dan picks it up, water soaking his fingertips, and hands it back over. Phil turns his hand underneath Dan’s, deliberately, prolonging the movement. Dan swallows. 

Phil blushes, high and pink on the paleness of his face. His breath comes in puffs of ice and his eyes are bright. Of all of Phil’s expressions (the obviousness of them, the feeling of looking directly into Phil’s heart, out in the open air and exposed for everyone to see) Dan knows this one the most. It says -

“Would you like to -” Phil begins.

“I can’t,” Dan replies.

“I didn’t finish the question.” 

“I just can’t.”

Phil’s snow weasel lets out a sad whine (high pitched and out of tune, like when Dan hits the wrong note on his violin). Phil says, “Okay,” and promptly drops the lock again. “No, I’ll get it - you should get home, it’s - I keep thinking that if I keep asking you might say yes, at some point. Maybe. It doesn’t - I’ll see you tomorrow?” The blush has disappeared, his eyes are slightly duller, the green somehow outweighing the blue. Dan knows this expression too. Disappointment. It always comes just after hope.

\---

Dan had loved his apartment once, when it wasn’t just him in it. It’s varying shades of grey ( _grey_ according to his mother _is very in fashion right now, Daniel_ as though that was the sole reason for his choice) with a lot of silver because silver complemented the gold fur of his lynx, and the lynx had always been the centrepoint of everything. Most of his family had cats of some variation: a Scottish Fold for his father, a Bengal for his mother. His brother had ended up with a Persian, fat and black with eyes like copper pennies. Lots of small domestic cats that scampered around everyone’s ankles at family parties, a chorus of meows. And then there was Dan (who really should have had the saddest looking cat of them all) with a lynx. So huge it had to sit in its own chair.

His brother had been jealous. Everyone was. His grandmother, exotic shorthair on her lap, frequently said, “Where did that thing _come from_?” while the lynx majestically cleaned its paws or majestically drank from a bowl of milk or did any number of things majestically, Dan loitering a few steps behind it. “Are you sure it didn’t pick the wrong house?” and everyone would laugh.

“Did you?” Dan would ask later, letting the lynx bump its nose against his hand. It purred like a plane getting ready for take-off. “Did you come to the wrong house? I won’t be angry if you did.”

The lynx sighed (it often did, if Dan was being too self-deprecating or sad). 

Dan thinks that there’s some other person out there, with the exact same birthday as him, someone confident and charismatic, whose anima is something like a mouse (dark furred and shy) or maybe a fawn of some kind (too tall and uncomfortable in its frame). The books might all say that animas don’t necessarily reflect your personality but he’s not sure if that’s true. His brother’s Persian is stubborn and demands attention. His mother’s Bengal is proud and independant. PJ’s robin charms everyone and flits from person to person. Even Dodie’s peacock makes sense, if he’s honest, in the elegant way that she carries herself.

(Phil’s snow weasel doesn’t stop moving and looks at Dan, on the rare occasions that he’s close by, as if Dan is single-handedly responsible for every star in the sky).

Dan had loved his apartment once but now it’s just carefully selected grey that no longer complements anything, with furniture that’s all too far apart because it needed to accomodate a lynx that just always took up too much room. Dan has never taken up too much room. He tries to spend as little time there as possible, which is surprisingly easy with therapy, then the orchestra, and then (finally, saved to the end as a sort of reward, a well done for getting through the day, through all the days) the library. And Phil, who really is a reward that Dan does not deserve. 

He plays Brahms (sonata number 2, over and over, half on autopilot) until his downstairs neighbour very politely knocks on the ceiling.

\---

Cornelia says, “Hello Dan!” while everyone else tags along a beat too late. A steady build of _Hello Dan_ that ends in, “Would you like to tell us about your week?”

Fridays are recap days (Cornelia says _reflection days_ ) where they all talk about the interesting things they’ve done in the past few days in the hope that one of those things will actually be interesting and not the same as last week. They’re all creatures of habit, Dan more than most.

“I came here,” Dan replies. “Then I went to work.”

“How is that going?”

Dan frowns. “ _Work_? It’s fine. I like it, I’ve always liked it. We’re still rehearsing that piece, the one I told you about last Friday. And probably the Friday before, actually. And maybe the one before that.”

“And after work?”

“I went to the library.”

Cornelia nods. “And what did you do there?”

“I read.” Cornelia nods again, encouragingly. She always reminds Dan of a kind teacher trying to help him pass a test that he’s failing. He adds, “Books?” 

“About what?”

Dan pulls at his sleeves. She tracks the movement. “Things.” He pulls the cuffs right over his fingers, preparing for the next question which is always:

“What was your favourite part of the week?”

Dan, without thinking, says, “The cinnamon candles.”

If Cornelia is surprised she doesn’t show it. “Really? Tell me about those.”

“Someone got them for me.” Everyone in the horseshoe is leaning towards him. He should have said the orchestra, he _always_ says the orchestra. “That’s it. It’s not a big deal. You don’t have to-”

“Thank you Dan,” Cornelia says, graciously. She turns to Dodie, on his right. “Hello Dodie!”

Dan dutifully joins in with the _Hello Dodie_ s and listens politely to Dodie describe what feels like every hour of every day of her week. Dodie takes reflection day very seriously. When they’re back at their normal tables, writing down their hopes for the week to come, she whispers, “It was nice of someone to get you candles. I hope you said thank you.”

“I don’t know if he got me candles, specifically. I just said I liked the smell and when I went back he’d lit, like, fifty of them. Does that count?”

Dodie rolls her eyes. “That counts. You should get him something back. What does he like?”

Dan says, “I don’t know. I haven’t asked.” Dodie sighs. “And I said thank you. Of course I did.”

“What are you reading? When you’re in the library all the time?”

“I’m researching more than reading.”

“Then what are you researching?”

Dodie, of all people, would understand. This entire group would understand. But they would understand _too much_. They’d think it was a wonderful idea and a great way to spend time, and everyone would troop to the library (the only place that feels like it belongs to him, even if only a tiny bit). They would all meet Phil and, in Dan’s head, would notice that Phil looks at everyone with the same expression of hope and awe and that Dan isn’t special at all. 

He’s not great with sharing (physically and mentally). “Just stuff for the orchestra. Music stuff.”

“I always forget that you’re in an orchestra until we do Friday sharing. It always surprises me.” Dan must raise his eyebrows or do _something_ because she instantly says, “No, not in a bad way. A good way. I just - I always think that people who play music  feel things a little bit more, that we’re just more - I wish you spoke more, Dan.”

“On Fridays?”

“Not just Fridays, any days. Otherwise it seems like you don’t want to be here.”

“I don’t.”

“Then what do you want?”

“For things to be like they were before.”

Dodie says, “Dan, doesn’t everyone want that?”

\---

There’s a rumour that the composer has visited the concert hall where they rehearse, but in a disguise. This rumour may have been started, or at least elaborated, by PJ, who half forgets to ask Dan how his morning has been through the sheer excitement of it all. He’s explaining the secondary rumour that the woodwinds are going to be the next section to be left out when he remembers. “Wait - today’s Friday, Friday’s sharing day right? How was that?”

“I shared,” Dan replies.

“You did not,” PJ replies, but he sounds proud.

“And I wrote down my hopes for next week.”

(Dan’s Hopes for Next Week had been _to not write anymore hopes for next week_. PJ doesn’t need to know that).

“Which are?”

He should have known that PJ would ask. PJ always asks, in a incredibly genuine and caring way. The hand not holding his bow clasps Dan’s upper arm. “Dodie, this girl who sits next to me when we do the activities, said that she’s always surprised when I say I’m in an orchestra. She said that people who play music usually feel things more, which - I don’t know if that’s -”

“I think you feel a lot of things _too much_ ,” PJ says. “Tell me what your hopes were.”

“The ones I wrote down or my genuine ones.”

“I’m guessing the ones you wrote down were horribly sarcastic, so the real ones please.” 

“For.” Dan stops, attempts to start again. “For everything to just - for there to be a point to -” He can’t quite manage it. Honesty, or the kind of honesty that means having to say what he truly feels, truly thinks, doesn’t come easily to him anymore. If it ever did at all. He gives PJ a pained look. 

PJ curls his fingers into Dan’s sweater. “It’s okay, Dan.”

“I thought I would have gotten better with that. The sharing. It’s been four months.”

Four months since the last time he shared anything. And the last time he shared anything it was stolen from him. PJ raises his eyebrows as they, presumably, share the same thought.

\---

Dan started the research in desperation. He didn’t think it would ever be successful, he _knew_ , somehow, that it wouldn’t be, it couldn’t be, because things just didn’t work like that. Stolen animas didn’t get returned. There wasn’t one single article, letter, story where it happened. He’d read the story about the man finding his lost seal over and over, but it had lost its hope. Why had the seal been allowed to get lost in the first place? Why would someone be so lazy as to not check right outside their house? The more he read the more he spoilt it. The lady with the two animas, how selfish, how greedy. To have two when some people had lost their only one. Dan frequently tore them both from his notebook, only to copy them back down again days later (so many times that he could write it from memory). The seal story ended with the man saying _I knew it hadn’t left, I didn’t feel the bond break_. Dan underlined this every time he rewrote it.  He didn’t feel the bond break.

Not everyone believed in the bonds. Dan never had, he couldn’t even remember knowing what the lynx was feeling, or the lynx giving any indication that it knew what Dan was feeling either. It was never sad when Dan was, or scared, because it was never sad or scared at all. Animas in themselves were confusing. They didn’t come with names, they couldn’t talk. They just claimed you, at some point, in the week after you were born and that was it, you were together for life. They did everything you did, went everywhere you went, and when you died they disappeared (but when they die, you don’t. And none of the books said anything about what you were meant to do when they disappeared too early).

Dan writes He didn’t feel the bond break again. How would you know what a bond breaking felt like? What does a bond existing feel like? 

Phil says, “You’ve done lots of writing today.”

Dan jumps. His pen makes a jagged line up the page. “What?”

“More than usual.” Phil is pushing the same book trolley with what looks like the same books. Sometimes Dan thinks that he just leads it up and down in parallel lines past the desk until Dan notices him. “You found something interesting?”

“I - I re-found something. If that makes sense.”

“It doesn’t,” Phil replies, sounding endeared by the fact. “I didn’t see you come in earlier.”

Dan had actually snuck in, not intentionally, but he’d been knocked out of sync by the sight of what he’d thought was another lynx (it was actually a bobcat, the ears and tail were all wrong) and it took a while to calm down the sudden fluttering of his heart (he’d been milliseconds away from dropping to his knees and saying _I’m here, you found me!_ ). He’d arrived at his desk without even realising (it had been saved. There was a mug of coffee and a lit candle waiting). 

Phil continues, “I didn’t think you were coming.”

Dan huffs. “Where else would I _go_?”

“Um - home? Somewhere else that isn’t a library?” Phil blinks, concerned. “You have - I mean, I just assumed, I didn’t -”

“I have a home, Phil. It’s just not very homely.”

“And the library is?”

“Yes. Surprisingly.”

Phil smiles (it’s fond, the kind of fond that happens when you’ve been with someone for a long time and they do something especially _them_ and there’s a sudden realisation, or a remembrance, of how much you love them). Dan leans out of the unearned glow of it.

He knows two things, honestly. One is that the research is pointless. Two is that Phil, for some reason, so inexplicably that Dan thinks he might have cast a spell accidentally, likes him. He’s in denial about the first and not deserving of the second. 

“You could mix up the books,” Phil says. “I could bring you others, so you could take breaks. You don’t have to read about animas constantly.”

“But I _do_. I’m still only on S. And I have to go back to -”

“Then what happens when you finish?”

“When I _finish_?” 

“Yeah. You’re planning to actually finish, right?”

Dan doesn’t know. He’s not sure what he’ll do when he reaches Z with still the same two articles in his notebook. Possibly loop back around to A and start all over again. A is for Anima: A creature that appears a week after a person is born, to be their lifelong companion and guide. Animas can be of any breed and appear, based on study, to select their charges at random. It is possible for animas to become lost or separated from their people, with anima theft having escalated in recent years. The theft of an anima is thought to be the greatest loss that a person can experience.

Phil says, “Dan.”

“I’m planning to finish. I just don’t know how.”

“You’re looking for your anima.” It’s not worded like a guess, or a query, because the answer is so obvious, and Phil’s known the entire time, watching Dan from his desk, pushing the book trolley back and forth, and yet it’s the first time he’s said it out loud. “In books.”

Dan had thought Phil liked him after the first meeting, the dropping of the books and the look on his face, but it had been passing. Dan can grab people’s attention but struggles to hold it. The second and third times Phil’s face had been the same, like he was trying to say something and Dan should have left a polite pause for him to do so instead of running away to his desk. By the seventh time Dan was starting to look over his shoulder because Phil surely must be directing that expression at someone else but he thinks he could be in a whole room of people and Phil would still only be looking at him. The thought of being liked evolved from a possibility into a fact. Dan knows. Phil hides nothing; everything about him is so bright that you should be able to see it all the way from the tube station (a beacon leading Dan to the library), and every time he asked _would you like to_ , the question that never got finished, he was luminescent (a flame Dan continued to extinguish).

He wants to say _Phil, it’s just that you haven’t met me at a very good time. I’m not sure when the good time would have been exactly but it’s not now._ He wants to say _You must have a billion options that aren’t me, have you seen you, do you look at yourself in the mirror ever. How can you even pay attention to me when all I do is sulk in the back of your library_. 

(What he wants to say the most is _Finish the question. Would I like to - what? The answer’s yes, it would always be yes_ , but the truth of that only rears its head on very late nights when he’s played the violin for too long and thinks he can hear the padding of phantom paw steps in his flat. It wouldn’t work, Phil and him. It would be handing over the sun to a life in the shade. _Finish the question_ ).

“I really could help,” Phil says. “I mean it. If you wanted me to.”

“There’s nothing to help _with_. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You’re researching. That’s what you always say.”

“It’s just so I can do _something_. And not be useless.” Phil starts to say _you’re not_ but Dan interrupts. “Do you believe there’s a bond?”

Phil stops whatever he was saying after _you’re not_. “Between someone and their anima?” Dan nods. “I don’t know. I’ve never felt it. My brother broke his hand once and his anima walked with a limp for the entire time he was in a cast but they’re both just dramatic, so - I know that a lot of people think it’s true though. But that’s maybe the same people who give them names.”

“You haven’t?” Phil strikes Dan, for some reason, as the type of person who would name his anima. 

“Nope. I feel like if they had names they’d tell us, you know? We shouldn’t just randomly pick for them.”

“What about them reflecting your personality?”

The snow weasel, as if anticipating the question, falls off the shelf it’s trying to climb and knocks over a lamp in the struggle to right itself. Phil watches its paws wave in the air and says, “I’m not sure. I’ve seen ones that seem right but then you see people with spiders and stuff and then I don’t know what that would say about you if you ended up with a spider. I went to school with a girl who had an _ant_ and I don’t know how her parents even realised that it was there but, I always sort of hoped that it wasn’t the case that they got picked because of your personality because I just think about her. But then there’s the opposite way, you could get like a lion or something amazing and then have to try and live up to that.” He wheels the trolley forward and then backwards. “I prefer the idea of it being random. That it just is what it is.”

“But isn’t it nicer to think that it’s special?”

Phil raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know, is it?”

Dan shrugs, suddenly awkward (well not _suddenly_ awkward, he’s always awkward. More like the sheer amount of his awkwardness all collapses on him at once). “I thought it was. Or that it would be. Even when it didn’t make sense. I used to -” Phil leans a little closer, the trolley is close to tipping over. Dan says, “You don’t have to stay and talk to me.”

“You’re the only person here. The library isn’t most people’s idea of the perfect evening hang out spot.” 

“That’s exactly why it’s mine.”

Phil smiles, a quirk of one side of his mouth, tongue pressed to the gap between his teeth. “When I started working here I couldn’t cope with how quiet it was. Everytime I knocked something over it echoed. And I knock a lot of things over, you know that. I’m not really a quiet person. I _try_ to be, but -”

“But you like it here now?”

“I liked it once I changed to evenings,” Phil replies. Dan knows what he’s going to say next before he actually says it, and he almost wants to reach out and stop the words from coming. Or to catch them up and keep them forever. “I liked it better when I met you.”

Dan says, “Ha,” (not even a laugh, just the word _ha_ , flat and sad). “I don’t know how anything would be made better by meeting me. There’s not very much to like about me, is there? And I don’t know what you could like, you’ve only seen me researching how to find stolen animas.”

“That’s what you’re doing?”

Dan feels like he had when he’d said Too Much to Cornelia, the tightening of his heart trying to regather all the things that have accidentally been revealed about himself. He wants to curl up and tell Phil not to look (he blames the bobcat for having the audacity to look like a lynx from far away). He says, “Maybe. Or, yes.”

“Stolen animas,” Phil half-whispers.

“Specifically mine.”

“ _Your_ stolen anima.”

“Yes,” Dan says, half-whispering back, directing everything to the desktop rather than to Phil. “My stolen anima.”

Phil says, “I didn’t know,” and sounds confused by this. It strikes Dan as an odd thing to say, because how _would_ Phil have known when Dan hasn’t told anyone outside of his immediate circle (a very small circle consisting of PJ and his family, and one or two inspection officers). He’s never even told Cornelia, and someone (presumably his parents) is actually paying her to talk to him about it. Phil, with his soft voice and soft expressions, is the only person Dan has told in four months. “I’m sorry.”

Dan’s go-to response is usually _why?_ He never knows how to react to having someone’s full attention, to having compassion or interest centered on him. A strong _why?_ is enough to stop the conversation usually. No one knows how to respond to it. He opens his mouth to say why and instead says, “You don’t need to say sorry. It wasn’t anyone’s fault except mine.”

Phil looks pained (a fold of his eyebrows, bottom lip pursed). “I don’t think that’s true.”

“How would you know? Like I said, you only see me in the evenings, when I’m -”

Phil says, “I know.”

“- Doing pointless research,” Dan finishes. Then, “What?”

“It’s not pointless if it’s important to you.”

“Have you ever found any kind of evidence that stolen animas get returned?”

“I could find something. I’d search the entire library if you wanted me to. And the basement even, and I hate it down there. I’d look everywhere. Do you want me to? Because I will.”

The _why_ that’s been floating around Dan’s head throughout the entire conversation (Why are you being so nice to me? Why are you _always_ so nice to me? Why do you even want to talk to me at all?) finally arrives. “Why would you do that?”

Phil flushes. The snow weasel sends every book on the check-in desk toppling to the floor, reference cards scattering on the breeze. The two other people in the library (a boy and girl sharing a huge medical journal) give Phil a despairing look. Phil obviously had never even registered that they were there. Mess in a library makes people anxious; they should be orderly places, clinical and quiet. Phil, none of those things, smiles apologetically at Dan and walks away.

Dan finishes the chapter on Searching. It proves nothing, only overly flowery descriptions of animas searching for their baby humans, picking just the right child to suit them. People are desperate for there to be a _reason_ , a hidden meaning, for why an anima comes to belong to them. He thinks about the girl with the ant, the girl with the spider, a boy he knew in university who had a mosquito and used to say, very darkly and often, _you get used to the buzzing_. How could anyone be the right child to have a mosquito. How could Dan be the right child to have a lynx. 

He ticks Searching on his list and wonders if tomorrow is time to go back to R, or if it’s easier to leave R forever unread. He can pretend the answer was there, hidden in R, and that he just never read it. Is that better than admitting that there’s actually no answer at all?

Later Dan loiters by the doors, listening to wolves howling and the song of a hundred birds, focused on his feet, scuffing the side of his shoes on the kerb. There’s the distant bellow of something huge and another something moving around on one of the balconies above his head. It’s always too loud outside. 

Phil, the usual explosion of clashing prints and colours, arrives with his keys and padlocks. “You’re still here!” he says, delighted. 

Dan looks around for the true recipient of Phil’s smile. “You mean me?”

“I mean you. Are you waiting for me?” 

“I -” Dan stops, sudden realisation dawning. He must have been. “It looks that way, yes.”

Phil waits. “Did you want to ask me something?”

Dan thinks _so many things_. “No, I was just -”

“You asked me a question that I didn’t answer earlier.”

“Did I?”

Phil nods. “Yes. And the answer is, because I want to. Because every day, from five until eight I watch you sitting at your desk, by yourself, and I want to come and sit next to you instead of pushing around books that I never put on any shelves. You look so sad sometimes that I just want to take whatever’s bothering you and file it away in one of the corners where no one goes and then lose the place card so we never find it again. I want, I always _want_ -”

“You can help,” Dan interrupts, before Phil says something that he can’t take back and that Dan isn’t equipped to accept. “If that’s what you want.”

“That’s not all that -”

“I’d say I’d give you my notes, but there aren’t any.”

“But you’re always writing, you were writing the whole time you were here today, I _watched_ you.”

“I’m always writing the same thing.”

Phil says, “Dan,” and it sounds new, like no one has ever said it before, a completely new tone to a name he’s heard a million times. 

“So, you could help. I’d let you.”

“You’re saying that like you don’t usually let people help you.” Dan shrugs and Phil says, “Dan,” again. _Dan_. “I’ll help. Tell me what you need.”

“That,” Dan replies, “Is an extremely long list.”

He leaves Phil struggling with the door locks, snow weasel pushing its head out of his rucksack, all the Too Many words he’d said scattered in the still melting snow and impossible to take back. It’s the most Dan has said to anyone, the most he’s revealed, in too long. He plays Massenet all evening, plays straight through his neighbours banging the floor, the ceiling, his front door. Dan plays until his fingers and his heart ache.

\---

Dan has spent a lot of time observing the world from a safe distance, hiding behind things: phones and music stands and the golden fur of a lynx and violins and sometimes PJ (standing with his back safely against the wall at parties). In books and in quiet corners of libraries and side exit of a concert hall. Stooped over a piano, before deciding on the violin instead because you were a bit on display, he thought, playing the piano. People could see your every mistake. You weren’t hidden in the mass of an orchestra. He’d been better at the piano, actually, but he’s never been great at admitting to being good at anything. Second violin, never first.

He can add the balcony of his flat to the list. It’s tiny, and his toes touch the railings when he stands on it, but it’s nice. To watch and be unwatched. He looks at the floor or at the sky, nowhere in between (even though the inbetween is where everything’s happening). There’s not much that he directly looks at. 

Phil is one of the exceptions. But it’s impossible not to look directly at Phil (with his fringe pulled back from his forehead and his face soft. _I’d search the entire library if you wanted me to. I’d look everywhere_ ) in the same way that it’s impossible not to think about him, no matter how hard Dan tries. 

When he met Cornelia for the first time, one-to-one in the little meeting room before she walked him out to the group, she asked him what people would say when they saw his anima. It had seemed an odd thing to say, but looking back, it was probably Cornelia already realising that he wasn’t going to talk about himself. Dan sighed and said, “How beautiful it is.” Cornelia nodded, wanting him to say more. He didn’t. 

“Do you feel like you’ve lost something beautiful?” Cornelia asked, after a polite pause. “Or the beautiful part of yourself?”

Dan replied, “I don’t know, do I feel like that?” when really he should have said _yes_ because it’s really just him now, the less beautiful part, a fraction of a missing whole.

\---

Phil says, “Books!”

Dan, very slowly, says, “Yes. Here. In the library.”

“No, I mean -” Phil pushes a small pile of paperbacks into Dan’s hands. “For you. For when you take breaks.”

“I don’t take breaks.”

“No,” Phil frowns. “You don’t.” 

Dan holds the books against his chest. “You were serious about helping.”

“Obviously.” Phil awkwardly brushes his hand over his forehead (he had a fringe, at the beginning, and sometimes forgets that it’s no longer there). “So, I’ll research and you read.” He reaches for Dan’s notebook, pushed to the side of the desk. Dan leans in his way. “I know what I’m -”

Dan says, “It’s fine. I’ll do it, I’ve already started. I - I wasn’t in a great mood, on Friday, and I maybe said some things that - I’m fine on my own -”

“I really don’t -”

“But what if you find something?”

Phil’s hand, still reaching for the notebook, stops flat against the desktop. His thumb is very close to Dan’s little finger. “Isn’t that the point?” He turns to look at Dan, at some point (maybe between _that_ and _the_ ). Dan feels the movement but doesn’t look back. “Dan? Isn’t that -”

“It’s fine,” Dan repeats, for the third time. It’s _fine_. 

Phil leaves, the wheels of the trolley squeaking as he goes, and doesn’t take the little collection of books back. Dan is still cradling them on his lap. The top one’s cover is a picture of a walled garden, roses and daffodils and bluebells only visible through a half open door. He isn’t sure whether to take them or not, thinks about Phil selecting them (in his mind Phil is careful, ignoring all distractions to pick just the right titles to suit Dan. Pushing his glasses up his nose and reaching to sort his non-existent fringe. Dan should have said _Thank you for the books. Thank you for picking them out for me. Thank you for wanting to help. Thank you for listening_ ).

Something brushes his ankle. He jumps, bangs his knee on the underneath of the desk. Whatever it is brushes again, deliberately. He looks down to see the snow weasel, moving back and forth across his shoes. 

Dan says, “Oh,” and the snow weasel half-raises its tiny eyebrows in reply.

There are rules about touching another person’s anima (there’s even etiquette about staring at one for too long). Dan isn’t sure about the exact law on being touched _by_ one. Animas don’t tend to pay attention to anyone who isn’t their person. 

The snow weasel curls its tail across his laces, then stops to look up at Dan adoringly. Dan whispers, “Hi,” and it trills happily. 

Dan is reaching out before he realises, running the pad of his thumb from the snow weasel’s nose to the top of its head. It makes a confusing noise that’s somewhere between a purr and a hiss, half-happy and half-sad. 

Phil stops on his way back to the check-in desk and sighs (the sigh isn’t half of anything, it’s full of everything), turning around as if someone has touched him on his shoulder. 

Dan pulls his hand away, rests it safely in his lap. The snow weasel continues to weave its way from foot to foot.

\---

He takes the pile of paperbacks home (and doesn’t even realise that he’s done so until he’s reaching for his keys), not waiting to speak to Phil, not even saying goodbye to Phil at all. The unsaid word sits awkwardly in his chest because he knows he _should_ have said it. He should have said lots of things.

There are five books and the third, the largest, has a post-it on the front that says **Books About Finding Things: A List by Phil :)** Dan taps absently at Phil’s name, in neat rounded letters, and instantly wants to walk right back out of the door and to the library. 

The snow weasel had, eventually, slept on the toe of Dan’s right shoe, tail touching its nose. Dan didn’t pet it again, as much as he wanted to. When he decided to stand it jumped up two seconds before he did, pulling on one lace like it could stop him from leaving (it didn’t, it couldn’t). Dan walked past the desk slowly enough to hear Phil say _there you are_ as it ran back up onto one of the shelves. _I thought I’d -_ (he stopped as he saw Dan. Maybe that’s why Dan hadn’t said goodbye, but he should have. He still should have). 

The top book, the flowery cover, is The Secret Garden. There’s another note on the first page, Phil’s careful handwriting: _You’ll understand the message here. Also, there’s plants. I read this a lot as a kid because I was jealous of everything they kept alive. I only have to look at a plant and_. The bottom line is crammed to the bottom of the note, too small to read. Dan doesn’t understand it and is fairly sure he won’t understand the message either.

\---

They never get to see Cornelia’s anima (understandable; it probably waits out of sight during sessions, as patient and calm as Cornelia herself) and no one, to Dan’s knowledge, has ever asked her what it is. There’s two extremes in their group: those that ignore the existence of all other animas and those who are utterly captivated by them (breaking all the rules, staring and touching and picking up. Dodie in particular is guilty of this).

Dan thinks that her anima would be an owl or possibly a goat (Toriel style, with kind eyes and a gentle face). He makes a resolution to ask her, to be engaged in one-to-one-time, to say, Cornelia, I touched Phil’s anima, I touched its head and when I did Phil reacted like I’d touched him, and then it fell asleep on my shoe. And I know that we say that they don’t reflect people’s personalities, not officially, but I think they might because it looks at me like it absolutely idolises me, in a really obvious way, like it has no filter, and I’m trying not to think too much about what it means but you know me, you know I think too much, I don’t know why I just can’t think the exact right amount, like anyone else.

But then Cornelia will probably say _Who’s Phil?_ and Phil isn’t something Dan’s entirely up to sharing, so he says, “Fine, thank you,” very politely when she asks how things are.

Cornelia says, “Good, I’m glad to hear that. And I was glad to hear that you’re still enjoying the library - you spend a lot of time there. Was that where the candles were?”

Dan, caught off guard, says, “Yes. Wait, maybe. I -”

“It’s not a bad thing to talk about what you like, Dan.”

“I _know_ that. You’re literally being paid to listen to me talk about that.”

Cornelia doesn’t frown exactly but she does wrinkle her nose. “I don’t listen to you talk about very much at all.”

Dan pulls his sleeves right down to the tips of his fingers. “I know that. I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“For not talking?”

“You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I’m not here to -”

“But I do,” Dan says. “I do want to talk. I’m just not great at it. I always leave here wishing that I’d said things, I leave _everywhere_ wishing that I’d said things.”

“Things like what?”

Thank you, Dan thinks. And: Yes I’ll go wherever you want to go. And: Dodie, my anima was a lynx and it was far too beautiful for me. And: It was my fault, I know that. And: Does your anima look at me like it loves me because _you_ love me? How can that actually be a thing that’s true. 

“I don’t know,” Dan replies.

“I think you should try and say at least one of those things, every day, just one, to someone that you trust.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“You might surprise yourself.” Cornelia smiles. 

“I never surprise myself.”

\---

Dan says, “I’m glad you’re first violin.”

PJ blinks and very slowly lays his bow across his lap. “What?”

“I’m -” Dan clears his throat. “Glad that you’re first violin. And also that you’re my friend.”

PJ’s bow clatters to the floor. “What?”

“I’m not saying it three times, Peej.”

PJ blesses Dan with his toothiest, most glowing, smile. “Well, I’m glad I’m first violin too.” When he retrieves his bow he pats Dan once on the knee. “And also the other stuff.”

\---

When he gets to the library the encyclopedias are already laid out at his desk, as normal. The snow weasel is sat on top of volume U-Z and chirps as it sees Dan approach. Phil, piling books into a display that appears to have just been knocked down, says, “Sorry, I can’t get it to move. It’s being very stubborn.” His tone is polite but he flushes all the same. “I can pick it up if it’s really bothering you.”

“It doesn’t bother me.” Dan sits down. _Thank you for the books_ moves from his heart to his throat and comes out as, “The books. Thanks.”

Phil looks surprised. “That’s okay. They’re all about, well, I wrote what they were about, didn’t I? I just thought that, I don’t know, it would give you some hope. Maybe.”

Hope is the worst thing. Hope is a fragile petal that once bloomed on a full rose, too gentle for Dan to hold onto, and then he became too cynical to believe that it had ever been there at all. The sheer impossibility of it.

“Is there an order?” Dan asks. “That I should read them in?”

Phil says, “Not really. I just picked them because - I picked them for you, and - It’s going to be obvious, what they mean. Or what _I_ mean.”

“Will it?”

“Yes. I’m always obvious. You probably noticed.”

The snow weasel sits back on its hind legs and chirps again. To answer _yes_ would be to admit that he knows, that he _knows_ , that he’s seen the way Phil looks at him and he acknowledges it but hasn’t done anything about it, which possibly means that to answer _yes_ will also be to answer _no_ but to actually mean _I think I could fall in love with you, I really could_. Dan stares at Phil’s anima, which looks back at him with awe filled eyes.

The pause stretches, filled only with chirping. Phil eventually says, “It doesn’t - It only does that when it’s really happy, it’s not normally noisy, I can move -”

“It can stay.” Dan lifts his hand to slide the snow weasel from his book. Phil intakes a sharp gasp of breath and he stops. “Sorry, I didn’t - I wasn’t thinking. And I’m staring at it, I shouldn’t -”

Phil, words still caught on the inhale, whispers, “I don’t mind,” but he leans over and gently pushes the snow weasel off the encyclopedia. “There. You can sit.”

“At work everyone hides their animas from me,” Dan says, from nowhere, surprising even to him. “I think they think I’m going to get upset or it’ll be too hard, or that I’ll try and steal one. I read about someone doing that. I think it was in volume L. My best friend hides his when he sees me, my family all put theirs upstairs when I go home and everyone just sort of thinks that’s okay. And I don’t know if they’re doing it for their benefit or mine sometimes.” He adds, “I wouldn’t steal one.”

Phil instantly replies, “I know you wouldn’t. _They_ know you -”

“You don’t hide yours.” 

“I did at first,” Phil says, always honest. “But it doesn’t want to be hidden from you.” He waits, presumably for Dan to say something else, but Dan is half breathless with everything he’s already said. “I’ll - Tell me if it starts bothering you. I’ll be over at the desk.”

The snow weasel doesn’t stop chirping while Dan works, sitting itself dangerously close to his elbow. There is nothing to find in volume S, not even in Stolen, which ends up just being a sentence stating _see T for Theft_. Dan almost laughs at the bluntness of it. He’d expected essays under Stolen, interviews and studies, not a single line telling him he’s in the wrong place (as ever). 

Phil, coming back to scoop up the snow weasel, dressed in his bright coat over his bright shirt and his eyes somehow brighter than the two put together, says, “Found anything?”

“No. But I’m expecting that.”

“I’m closing up.” Phil holds his anima in the curve of his elbow; they both look at Dan with identical expressions. Dan feels _something_ , a sudden something, a desire to not move at all, to stop exactly as he is, to not do anything that might stop Phil looking at him like that. He doesn’t stand up. “Dan? It’s end of night, I need to lock the doors.”

“Right.” Dan gets to his feet so quickly that both of his knees bang the desk. “I’m - I’ll see you tomorrow.”

When he gets home he doesn’t play the violin (which had become some way to get from early evening to night time without any actual thinking) he sits and reads The Secret Garden while wrapped in a blanket still dusted with lynx fur.

It turns out to be a book about lonely (and posh) Mary Lennox, and a dark haired Northern boy called Dickon that helps her find and care for a forgotten garden. He’s patient when she’s moody and bright when she’s dark. He encourages her and the garden blossoms. _You’ll understand the message here_.

\---

“I read one of the books,” he tells Phil (though his eyes are on the lime green library carpet). “The garden one.”

“Oh!” Phil says, delighted. “Did you like it? I loved it when I was a kid. I was so jealous of them getting to have their own walled garden where everything grew amazingly.”

Dan had been jealous of Mary, in all honesty, getting to watch all of the tangled weeds and shrubs become something beautiful. To believe that she was someone beautiful herself. He says, “I liked it. I liked it a lot.” 

(He had cried, without meaning to or really feeling sad enough to. He wanted an epilogue, or a flash forward, with Mary and Dickon living in contented rose bordered happiness. She deserved it). 

“I really did. I think I get why you picked it.”

Dan watches Phil shuffle one foot to the other. Phil says, “Will you look up, please?” Dan does. Phil is a particularly dark shade of pink. Dan wants to put his hand to his cheek, to smudge the blush with his thumb. “You know what I meant.”

“I can’t give you a list of books back,” Dan says. “I don’t read.”

“You come to a library every day.”

“I can’t give you a list of anything.”

“You can talk to me instead.”

Dan looks at the snow weasel on Phil’s shoulder. It’s possibly blushing too. “About _what_?”

“About you. Tell me something about you.”

“You want to talk about me? Out of everything in the -”

“Out of everything in the world I want to talk about you,” Phil says. “Yes.”

“There’s nothing to -” Dan, for the second time to Phil, waves his hands around himself, the empty space, the missing anima. “There’s nothing.”

“That’s not all you are, Dan. That doesn’t _define_ -”

“You’re not my therapist,” Dan interrupts. He can feel his cheeks burning. The blush probably isn’t as soft as Phil’s. “I already have one of those. And I barely talk to her. I probably talk to you more already.”

Phil, as smoothly as if he’d meant it, as if it was prepared, as if there’s a whole inventory of things-he-wants-to-ask-Dan, says, “Tell me about your violin. It _is_ a violin, right? It’s not like a viola, or something small like -”

“It’s a violin. I’m in a philharmonic orchestra.”

“A _phil_ harmonic -”

“Stop.” Dan smiles, then wonders if he’s smiled at Phil before. The look on Phil’s face indicates not. He looks at Dan’s left dimple, and then his right. “I’m better at the piano, I learnt them both at the same time but my piano teacher was awful, and the piano was too small for my - it kept trying to - Anyway, I didn’t want to be up on stage on my own, and that’s hard, with a piano, so -” he holds up his violin case. “We play exhibitions for new composers, mostly.”

“And you like it?”

Dan says, “ _Of course_. I go there before I come here. I start the day with therapy so it’s just a steady build of things I hate into things that I lo - like a lot.” He adds, “The therapy’s compulsory.”

“I know. My brother’s girlfriend runs one of those groups.”

“Then she must be a very patient person.”

“She lost her anima too, so I think she just wants to help other people through it.”

“Then she’s also a much better person than me.”

Phil frowns. “You’re not particularly nice about yourself a lot of the time, Dan.”

“Stating facts,” Dan replies. “Is that enough talking about me or do we talk about you now?”

“ _Me?_ ” 

“Yeah. Why did someone as loud as you end up working in a library?”

“I’m a contradiction,” Phil says. “In a lot of ways.” Dan must smile again because Phil’s eyes track back, dimple to dimple. “But that’s just a cooler way of saying I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and I couldn’t keep just continually going back to uni all the time. It’s a good job. I meet some interesting people.”

“Interesting,” Dan echoes.

“Is one of many words that I could use.”

Dan sits at his desk and feels the familiar weight of the snow weasel settling itself on his shoe. Phil, walking away, doesn’t appear to notice the lack of it. He doesn’t know if he should say something, give Phil the opportunity to take it away, to go back to volume A-D to read more about bonds. He’d skim read that part because he hadn’t believed them, he still wasn’t sure if he did or not. He felt the loss of his anima in one particular spot, just under his ribs, a solid weight, but doesn’t everyone feel loss like that. It doesn’t feel like a weight that’s attached to anything, it isn’t stretched over cities and oceans, connecting to an identical spot under his lynx’s ribs. The only one with the weight is Dan. And yet.

He leans down to run his thumb around the small curve of the snow weasel’s ear and watches Phil, at the check-in, put his hand to the back of his neck. Dan pats its head and Phil reaches up to flatten his hair. Dan stops, too guilty to do anymore, and doesn’t do any work either. He fills his notebook with drawings of tiny lynxes, all the lynxes he never drew before, running up and down the margins with equally tiny snow weasels following them. 

Phil sees them when he brings Dan coffee but doesn’t comment, though it seems to remind him that he hasn’t seen his anima for a while. He looks over the shelves until Dan whispers, “It’s under the desk. Sat on my shoe.”

Phil says, “ _What_ ,” and drops to his knees. “Hey. Get back up here.”

The snow weasel chirps. 

“It’s been doing it for a while. I think it -”

“Likes you?” Phil supplies. “I take back everything I said about it not reflecting my personality then.”

Despite the fact that it’s obvious, that it’s really only Phil saying what Dan already knew, or already hoped, as unreal as it seems, Dan still gasps. It’s loud, bouncing off all the pine in the room. Phil looks up like he’s following the sound and says, softly, “That can’t be surprising to you.”

Dan thinks that, actually, it’s the most surprising thing that has ever happened to him. _Surprising_ isn’t a big enough word for any of it. “It is,” he says. “It really is.”

The snow weasel stays where it is, chirping as Dan works. The lynx had purred when it was happy but never to this extent, never to the point where it seemed to be overwhelmed with happiness in Dan’s presence. Dan gently nudges it with the toe of his other shoe when it’s time to leave and it follows him, whiskers on his ankles, as he walks to the main doors. 

Phil, an array of clashing colours as usual, says, “Dan.”

Dan, who never wears clashing colours because he never wears _colours_ , stood in the shadow of whatever glow Phil is casting, says, “Phil.”

“Would you like to -”

“To what?”

Phil makes an expression that Dan hasn’t seen before. He adds it to the list of faces that Phil has made in his presence (it has the raised eyebrows and half-open mouth of surprise, but also the soft eyes and clasped hands of hope). “Really?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. You kept saying that you couldn’t and I stopped sort of planning and now I literally can’t think of anything that I like to do ever. Uh, coffee? Would you like to coffee? To go for coffee. With me.”

Dan repeats, “Yes.”

\---

They go to a coffee shop that Phil knows, one that serves nutella lattes and huge mugs of hot chocolate with slices of cake stuck in the top. Phil orders something that has an entire waffle resting on a mound of foam and Dan says, “You’re never going to -” while watching him inhale the whole thing.

Phil makes sure they sit outside. It’s freezing; the chairs are still stuck in snow and their waitress looks amazed by the decision, but the inside of the shop is small, too small, and a woman near the counter looked Dan up and down as they walked in and said _poor thing_ as Phil, almost immediately, said _outside_.

Dan ordered a caramel macchiato (thinking it would be safe) and it came with a huge weave of honeycomb that he’s currently trying to break his way through. Phil, shivering in his too light coat, watches him. “We could have stayed inside,” Dan says. It’s not true. 

“Do you get that a lot?” Phil ignores the lie. “People saying that?”

“I get it _constantly_. I can’t think of anyone who didn’t say it the first time they saw me, or something like _oh what happened_ or _oh that’s so terrible_ or something.” The honeycomb shatters. “No, actually,  you didn’t say it.” 

“I said I was sorry,” Phil says. “Which I thought about afterwards. I meant it, but, I don’t know, I felt - You must have heard that from so many people and I didn’t want to annoy you. It was, like, instantly important to me that I didn’t annoy you. I just wanted to help you because I didn’t like, I _don’t_ like, seeing you - no, I like _seeing_ you, but not - You looked sad and I really wanted you not to be. I _want_ you not to be.”

Dan stirs his coffee so much that he spills half onto the saucer. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

“You don’t have to say anything, I’m just telling you.”

“You don’t want me to at least respond to -”

“Not if you don’t know what to _say_.” Phil holds his hands up. The snow weasel is looped around his neck like a scarf, always looking at Dan. “It’s just so you know. I’m not telling you to say anything back.”

“The library’s my favourite place to go,” Dan says. “And I think it’s because you’re there. I haven’t found anything in the books, ever, I don’t think there’s anything to find, but I come back anyway. And I think that if I asked you to help you’d read every book in the place, cover to cover, because I wanted you to, and that’s a lot.” Phil looks unsure. “Not in a bad way. I say a lot to you. I say more to you than I say to anyone.”

Phil smiles, just the left side of his mouth uplifting. 

Dan plays Edvard Grieg when he gets home: happy, joyful music that seems made to soundtrack the motion of Phil reaching out and putting his hand, firmly, on Dan’s shoulder and saying _I’m glad that_. The many things that Phil is glad about felt scored on Dan’s skin; he still felt the warmth of it now, stood alone in his grey apartment (the grey, somehow, seemed gentler).

\---

“Is something good happening?” PJ asks. “Did something good happen? You can tell me. You _should_ tell me.”

Dan played the Grieg again, as a warm-up for rehearsal. He and PJ used it for their college audition, and when they needed to duet on anything. PJ’s whole face had lit up when he heard it, like he’d plucked it from a dream. “Maybe it’s happening, I don’t know. It’s been a good few days, that’s all. I talked to a few people, it’s not so much -” he pats his hand over his heart. “Not as much.”

Cornelia is big on sharing weight. She says it all the time. _Share the load, guys, talking helps lighten your feelings. Speak to people, speak to me, speak to each other._ Dan, who keeps his words close and unsaid, had never really thought about it. He doesn’t like to say things that can’t be taken back, but he can admit that he really means that he avoids saying things that are genuine. 

PJ does something complicated with his hand over his own heart, a lot of hand fluttering that eventually looks like a bird flying away.

\---

T for Theft is twenty pages long, the longest entry so far. It begins with the same sentence from A for Anima: _The theft of an anima is thought to be the greatest loss that a person can experience._ Dan doesn’t need to write that down. He actually doesn’t need to write any of it down; it’s more a series of descriptions of how animas can be stolen, how difficult it is because animas will fight to get themselves back to their human and to get one stolen in the first place means that the human must have missed something or have been distracted. There are no records of stolen animas being returned or recovered. No one’s entirely sure what happens to them, if they’re sold to people who never had one in the first place, if they’re swapped (ant for lion, mosquito for lynx).

 _Those who believe in the bond state that eventually, the human can feel it break_ says the article, soberly, and with nothing to back this fact up. Dan touches his chest, below his ribs, and doesn’t write that down either. 

It must have been swapped, he thinks. It was a beautiful anima; everyone stared at it even though it was bad manners to do so. But he shouldn’t be commenting on how to treat other people’s animas when Phil’s is still curled around his foot.

The lynx had slept curled up too, but in such a manner that it took up three quarters of the bed. It used to bump the back of Dan’s knees whenever he walked into a crowded room, making him take a step forward, and it would sit regally at Dan’s side in the orchestra, reflecting the entire bass section on its fur. It had to have been swapped. Maybe it belonged to someone as equally golden and glowing now. Dan actually hopes so. It’s better than the alternative. 

“Today’s chapter was theft,” he tells Phil, at closing. “Tonight’s book is The Goldfinch.” It was the second in the pile. Phil’s note said _I feel like you’ll like this one_. 

“That’s very fitting,” Phil replies. “You’ll understand why.” He swings the padlock in his hand. “I don’t think you’ll finish it in a night though.”

“If it’s about lonely posh people being helped by dark haired Northern boys then I’m sensing a theme.”

Phil laughs. The snow weasel trills. Dan looks at his feet.

\---

The Goldfinch is about lonely (and posh) Theo Decker, and a dark haired Ukrainian boy called Boris who doesn’t help him exactly but is obviously in love with him. Theo steals a painting, then loses and finds it again. Everyone is very eloquent and says things like _we don’t get to choose our own hearts_ and _he was a planet without an atmosphere_ without actually saying what they mean. Theo searches and searches and Dan, when he finishes, isn’t sure if he actually found anything at all but he desperately wants this sad fictional person to be happy, which was probably Phil’s aim all along.

Phil says, “Did you like it?” halfway through another waffle topped coffee.

Theo Decker’s half healed soul still resonates with Dan a little. He says, “I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s not a no.”

“It was very beautiful.” Dan stirs the perfect layers of his latte. “And very sad.”

“What was sad about it?”

Dan shakes his head. “Just the general - both of those books should have had epilogues. Happy epilogues. Where they’ve found everything they need and they’re both happy.”

“Both?”

“The lonely posh person and the dark haired boy. I told you, I get the message.”

“If you want an epilogue,” Phil says, eyes bright, “Then you should write one.”

\---

Cornelia says, “Hello Dan! Would you like to tell us about your week?”

“It was good,” Dan replies. 

Cornelia blinks owlishly, her careful poker face disrupted for the first time Dan can remember, and she moves onto Dodie without even asking any follow-up questions.

He writes _for things to not get worse_ in his Hopes For Next Week, then clarifies _to stay as they are_ and then _for things to get better_. _To have more coffee. To be a good friend to PJ. To play happier music. To see Phil. To talk to Phil. To read Phil’s books. To tell him I understand what he’s doing. To tell him all of those things back. To get better and to be better._

They don’t share their hopes for the week. Cornelia says they’re private wishes that are for them alone and then makes them tear the paper and throw the segments into the air. Dan doesn’t usually participate in that last part (and if he ever has then he doesn’t throw it very high) but today he shreds his list into tiny pieces and scatters them onto the breeze. 

One of the sections catches on his jacket. He doesn’t realise until he’s in the library and Phil says, “What’s that?”

The piece says _tell him_. Dan says, “Oh, that’s just one of my hopes for next week.”

“Tell who what?” Phil smiles and Dan loves that smile, the slow unfurling of it. Phil smiles like he’s surprising himself, like he’s utterly delighted with every single thing that’s going on around him. Dan wants to memorise it to look at again when he’s by himself, a reminder that it happened. _You said something and then he smiled at you like that, like he loves you._

“It’s a hope for _next_ week.” Dan brushes the paper from his coat. 

“I can wait.”

“You’re assuming it’s about you?”

“It’s not?”

Dan smiles, not as blinding, not as obvious, but Phil hopefully understands.

But then the bond breaks and his hopes for next week are exactly that. Hopes. Torn shreds of paper that caught the wind for a moment and then fell to the floor. He should never have expected anything different.

\---

No one, in any of the articles, in any of the books, any of the interviews, had said what it felt like. Everyone was so concerned with the _existence_ of a bond that there was never any time to describe it. It just  breaks (and break is an incredibly simple word for what it feels like to have your already battered heart incinerate, a spark of heat in that one spot under your ribs that you knew, you _knew_ , was significant but you ignored).

Dan falls onto his knees (Phil says, “Dan?”), pats at his chest (Phil repeats, “ _Dan?_ ”), pulls at the already loose collar of his shirt. Several hardbacks hit the floor, Phil has apparently jumped the counter because his hands are suddenly at Dan’s shoulders. “Is something happening? Is something wrong? Are you having a -”

Dan feels like he’s being seperated, like he’s trying to hold all of his pieces together but he can’t do it; the load is too heavy and things keep slipping away. He’s too hot. He’s too cold. He’s dropping things. Things are missing. The most important thing is missing.

Phil says, “What can I do?” and Dan can’t hold onto that either. “Do you need -”

It stops, sudden enough to make him breathless, everything that he’d lost remains lost. The heat under his ribs is gone. He gasps at Phil (Phil gasps back, as if sharing air will help) and lies, as obvious a lie as he’s ever told, “I don’t know what happened.” He thinks that he lies more than he realises.

Phil shakes his head. “No, you know what happened, you -”

“I don’t know what happened,” Dan repeats. He looks at the floor, expecting to see broken shards, but he just sees the paper. _Tell him_. He’s halfway into Phil’s lap, Phil’s fingers are curled into the oversized cable knit of his sweater, there are books _everywhere_. “I don’t - or maybe I do, maybe I do know, I’m -”

“The bond broke.” Phil makes no effort to move, even though it can’t be comfortable, the way he’s sitting. He must have jumped the counter and instantly dropped down. “Didn’t it?”

“You don’t believe in the bond.”

“Neither do you.”

“I never said I didn’t.” Dan pulls one of Phil’s hands from his shoulder to his chest. Phil makes a soft noise. “There was something there, and now it’s not.”

“You’re holding my hand over your heart, Dan.”

Dan looks down. “I am.” He says, “I felt it leave,” at the same time as Phil whispers _your heart’s still there, I can feel it_. “I felt it break. I was waiting for it to happen. I was expecting -”

Phil’s fingers are splayed, bunching up the too thick fabric of Dan’s too big sweater, tapping along to Dan’s heartbeat as if to prove that the tempo still exists. “Dan, it’s going to be okay.”

It’s such a Phil thing to say that Dan almost laughs (almost). “How?”

“We don’t know if it was the bond, you could have just - We don’t even know if there _is_ a bond.”

“I know there is,” Dan says. “I do.”

“I know you’ve been doing all this research and -”

The snow weasel is around Phil’s neck, paws on his shoulders. Dan reaches up and touches the small shell of its ear, once. Phil shudders, the sensation travels right to his fingertips, Dan feels it and repeats, “I know there is.”

Phil’s eyes are dark, no green or yellow in them, just the blue. “How often have you done that? I felt it before, I’m sure that -”

“It likes me.”

“ _I_ like -”

“Why would you? Why _do_ you? The best part of me is gone.”

Phil’s grip is so tight that he’s surely going to start tearing through the wool. “That’s not true. They’re animas, Dan. They’re not the best part of you, or the good part of you. They’re just _animas_ , you can’t use it as a reason why -”

Dan stands up. He has to disentangle himself from Phil to do so and isn’t even aware that they ended up sitting so close. They bump knees, and Dan’s hand brushes the side of Phil’s face when he tries to get his balance.

Phil says, “Dan,” starting to get up himself. “Dan, don’t _leave_.”

Dan does so anyway.

\---

He plays Tchaikovsky because Tchaikovsky also lost everything (but he was able to turn it into something beautiful. The sweet hum of a bow on a string. Dan’s mother used to prefer him playing the piano because _oh Dan, the violin sounds like it’s crying, don’t you think?_ and he always thinks that Tchaikovsky sounds more like something wailing, sorrow that’s as clear as a bell. The sad yearning of a person who doesn’t know where or how to belong).

Dan isn’t an optimistic person, he’d never call himself so, but he realises (on the walk home, looking up for once, looking at all the animas he usually ignores) that he’d genuinely thought that he’d get his lynx back. It must have been a tiny splinter of a hope that he’d repressed and he’s annoyed with himself for even half-believing it. 

His neighbour bangs the door and shouts, “Mr. _Howell_ ,” and Dan realises that his fingertips are numb and he has, apparently, been playing the same music for hours. His neighbour repeats, “Mr. Howell?” slightly more politely. “Are you okay?”

None of the neighbours know his name. Dan’s never introduced himself and so they can only judge from what they see on parcels and the scrawl of writing underneath his door number on the intercom. He’s between _Mrs. Parker and hedgehog_ and _Mr. Winter and goldfish_. _Mr. Howell and ._. 

The person at the door must be Mr. Winter. It must be tricky to have a goldfish anima. Dan almost wants to ask how he manages. “I’m fine.”

“It’s two in the morning,” Mr Winter says, after a pause. “We all appreciate your playing but maybe you could call it a night now?”

Dan says, “I’m sorry,” and his voice cracks horribly on the word. “I’m so sorry.”

He opens his notebook to the page entitled _R for Reunion_ , the page that he’d been saving, the one he’d had such hopes for (because he’d had hopes, no matter how much he’d pretended not to) and feels the start of tears, tiny pinpricks of heat behind his eyes.

He tears all the pages from the notebook and throws them off his balcony into the Thames (where all of the water based animas live. Two dolphins rise up to see what’s going on). Eventually Dan throws the notebook itself and doesn’t stay to watch it sink.

He wonders how the lynx died, in the end. It’s difficult to kill an anima while their human is still alive. He’d read that in D for Death. _It’s difficult to kill an anima while their human is still alive and near_. He hadn’t been near. He hadn’t been anywhere and still is nowhere. He went to a library and  researched instead, how utterly useless, and he hadn’t even researched, he’d procrastinated on even that. 

The tears, when they finally come, are loud and broken, the exact pitch of an out of tune violin.

\---

He doesn’t go to therapy. Cornelia calls and texts, one of each, but doesn’t push any further. The text says _Hope to see you tomorrow Dan!_ PJ frowns at him being early for rehearsal and says, “You look really tired.”

“I didn’t sleep,” Dan says. He’s so early that PJ hasn’t taken his coat off. So early that he’s actually meeting PJ in the lobby. He hasn’t been in the lobby for months. “I - Something happened. Yesterday.”

PJ doesn’t unbutton his coat. The robin must be hidden somewhere in its folds. “Something like what?” His eyes track over Dan’s face. “Something bad.”

Dan nods. “Something bad.”

“Are you gonna tell me?”

Dan, for some reason, thinks, “Do you believe in the bond?” is a suitable answer to that question.

PJ, to his credit, just shakes his head solemnly. “I think it’s a nice _idea_ and I think people want it to be true, don’t they? I know that they’ve done studies and they can’t find a definite -”

“Mine broke,” Dan says. “Yesterday. I felt it.”

PJ stares at him, mouth half open. 

“I didn’t do enough to look.” PJ starts to speak. “No, Peej, I didn’t. I know I didn’t. I went to therapy then came here and then went to the library. I didn’t actually _look_ once.”

“Yes, you did. You were always looking.” PJ takes a cautious step towards Dan. “How do you know that it broke?”

Dan repeats, “I _felt_ it,” which feels very insignificant for what actually happened.

“What did it feel like?”

“Like I’m missing and you need to look for me too.”

“You’re not missing. You’re still right here.”

“Can I see the robin?”

PJ blinks. “What?”

“Can I?”

PJ opens his coat and the robin flutters out, settling into the nest of curls at PJ’s forehead. It pays absolutely no attention to Dan, or to the fact that he’s reaching out for it. PJ starts to step back. 

“I need to try something.” Dan touches his thumb to the robin’s head. It still doesn’t look at him. He runs his thumb back and forth, but he may as well not even be there. PJ stares at him. “I’m - That was really bad manners, I’m sorry, but -”

“That’s okay,” PJ says, still staring. “Dan, you can’t - Did you skip your session today? Is that why you’re here so early?”

“It’s a group for people with _stolen_ animas.”

“Yours _was_ stolen.”

“Was!” Dan says. “Past tense. I can’t go there. They all talk in the present.”

“You can’t just stop going because -” PJ stops. “You’re sure. That you felt it. That you know that’s what it was.” The robin beats its tiny wings in agitation. “You’re sure?”

Dan says, “I’m sure.”

Rehearsal goes badly. His hands still hurt from playing so long the night before. He drops his bow and snaps a string, throwing PJ and Brian (on his other side) completely off beat. His violin is a mournful sigh underneath the already too sad music, a sound all on its own.

\---

He leaves by the back exit before PJ can speak to him. PJ will have questions, will want to know why Dan touched his anima, will want to know what exactly Dan was trying to prove. Dan, knowing exactly what he was trying to prove and having actually proven it, doesn’t feel like explaining himself.

The back exit opens onto an alleyway of orange brick which he usually follows right down to the street opposite the tube station. There has never, in the last four months, been another person there.

Today, Phil is.

Dan stops. “What are you doing here?”

“You left,” Phil says. His jacket is red and, as always, too light for the weather. He’s wearing the snow weasel as a scarf and a bright blue t-shirt. “So I looked up orchestras in the area and could only find this one. And I waited for you.”

“You’re at the back exit.”

“I saw all the animas in the lobby and I remembered what you said, about them everyone hiding them from you. So I walked around and hoped you’d be here.”

“Here I am.”

“Here you are,” Phil agrees. “I took the day off work, and -”

“To research orchestras in London?”

Phil doesn’t even attempt to lie. Dan doesn’t think he could lie if he tried. “Yes. I thought it would take longer and I really wanted to talk to you. I _want_ to talk to you.”

“Really? About what?”

“Don’t be _sarcastic_. And don’t say _I’m always sarcastic_ or whatever you’re about to say. We need to talk about yesterday.”

“There’s nothing to really talk about, Phil. It happened. I knew it was going to eventually.”

“Then why did you do all that research about finding it? Why did you come to the library every night?”

Dan says, “Because I didn’t want to go home. Because I like the library, like I said before. It’s quiet and there’s not many people there. I never found anything useful, I was always just pretending that there would definitely be something in the next article, or the next chapter. And there never was. I never found anything.”

Phil pushes himself off the wall. “Would you like to -”

“Talk about this more? Because the answer to that is going to be -”

“- Take a walk somewhere?”

“A walk?”

“Anywhere you want to go. Anywhere there’s not many people.” 

Phil frowns after he’s said it. The choices of that are limited given that they’re in the centre of London but Dan has long since memorised the quietest areas and all the hidden corners. 

They go to one of the small gated parks in Chelsea, just opposite the concert hall and surrounded by neat apartment buildings. The gate is locked but Dan jumps over. Phil follows, landing in an inelegant tumble, and saying, “Don’t you need a key for these? Are we trespassing?”

“Yes,” Dan answers to both questions. “But it means no one comes in here.” The snow weasel runs down Phil’s arm and starts sniffing at the grass. The only flowers are roses but there’s a huge amount of them; all varying shades of peach and pink. They could be stood in a watercolour painting. “What do we need to talk about?”

Phil says, “ _Dan_ ,” despairingly. “About your anima. About why you left -”

“I don’t have an anima anymore.”

“ - About why when you touch my anima I feel it. All of those things.”

“I don’t know why that happens Phil. I shouldn’t have done it but I couldn’t help it. It’s not going to happen again so -”

“Why not? You’re not going to come to the library anymore?”

“There’s no point.”

Phil repeats, “No point,” and Dan realises what he’s going to say next before he actually says it. He watches the slow build of emotions on Phil’s face and wonders, not the first time, how Phil can be so obvious. How lucky he is to be able to say and show exactly what he means. Dan thinks _don’t say it don’t say it_ as Phil adds, “What about me?”

Dan says, “You,” and no other words will come out. 

“You asked me why I liked you when the best part of you is gone and I thought about that all night. I thought about it _constantly_ Dan, but I think about  you constantly and you asked me why I like you as if I can give you a simple answer when I can’t. You’re not simple in any way. But I never met you with your anima, you realise that right? _You’re_ the best part of you.”

“That doesn’t -”

“It made more sense in my head. But it’s true. And it’s fine if you don’t feel the same, it really is, but you keep interrupting like you don’t want to hear it but I want to say it so; I just did.” Phil gives a weak shrug. “And I want you to keep coming to the library. And I want you to stop talking about yourself like -”

“You think I don’t feel the same?”

“ - like you’re the missing half of something, you’re not half of -” Phil pauses. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“I want you to keep coming to the library,” Phil repeats. “Even if there’s no point, I want -”

“The _point_ ,” Dan says, “Was you. It wasn’t at the start but I wasn’t expecting you to be there. At the start. And then.”

Both Phil and the snow weasel are staring at him, unblinking. Dan waits for the familiar feeling of having had his words run away from him, the usual need to take them back, to pretend he was just being sarcastic, but it never happens. He feels like he’s said exactly the right thing (it doesn’t happen often). Phil’s expression is brand new, one Dan has never seen before. He saves it to memory. Phil smiles.

“Why did you recommend me books about dark haired Northern boys saving -”

Phil interrupts, “I don’t want to save you. You don’t need saving.”

“Helping,” Dan corrects. “Helping lonely people find things.”

“I don’t know, Dan. Why would I recommend you books like that?”

“You want to help me.”

“I want to be a very small part of you helping yourself,” Phil replies. 

The snow weasel spins in circles on the ground, kicking up ice shards and frozen rose petals. Dan says, “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“I think you already started. You just didn’t notice.”

\---

The climb back over the railings is just as undignified as the first. Dan lands in the still ankle deep snow and steadies Phil when he instantly slips. The snow weasel runs across Phil’s shoulders and over to Dan’s, looping itself about his neck like the scarf Dan isn’t wearing, the way it always wraps itself around Phil. Phil shudders.

Dan says, “I - I have a friend, my best friend, PJ. He plays first violin and he has a robin that I haven’t seen for a while because they hide them from me. I think I said. But I asked to see it today and I touched it, exactly like I do with yours, and it didn’t do anything. He didn’t feel anything and it didn’t even look at me. Why is yours so different?” 

The snow weasel touches its nose with its tail, then touches the tip of its tail to Dan’s chin. Phil shuffles awkwardly, clears his throat twice before he says, “You know why. Are you going to come to the library with me?”

Dan shakes his head. “Not tonight. I’ll come back tomorrow, but - not tonight.”

“What did you do yesterday after you left? I was going to follow you, and then I worried the entire time about where you’d gone.”

“I went home,” Dan says. “And played Tchaikovsky until my neighbour asked me to stop.”

Phil holds his arm out for the snow weasel. Very reluctantly, it clambers back over onto Phil’s shoulder. Dan raises his hand but thinks better of petting it. He remembers Phil’s shudder, the flinches and the looks behind him. 

He says, “What does it feel like? When I -” he motions as if to touch the snow weasel. “I should have asked. I won’t do it if it -” if it what? Hurts? The idea that he might have been giving Phil tiny injuries this entire time suddenly occurs. “I really hope it doesn’t, I hope that -”

“It doesn’t hurt. You said that you felt the bond leave, yesterday. That it broke.”

Dan nods.

“When you -” Phil runs his hand down the snow weasel’s back. It preens under his touch. “Uh, when you do that, it feels like something arriving. Like, for a second, or however long you’re doing it, everything is just perfect. In a really overwhelming way.”

“And you didn’t think that was strange?”

“No,” Phil replies. “I assumed it was just my natural reaction to being around you.”

\---

The next book is The Song of Achilles and there are no dark haired Northern boys, just lonely Patroclus and the beautiful golden half-god that he loves. Dan understands the message in that one just fine, though he wonders how Phil could ever have known. Patroclus exists in Achilles’ gleaming shadow (loving him and wondering why it’s possible for that love to be returned) until they’re separated. Dan doesn’t read much after that, doesn’t get much further than _perhaps it is the greater grief to be left on earth when another is gone_.

He presses his hand, out of habit, to the spot on his chest that now holds a knot of nothing. He used to push his fingertips there and feel a spark that he would pretend was sending a message, maybe Morse code, to the lynx wherever it was. _I’m here and I haven’t forgotten you_. He never received a message back.

Dan isn’t sure if grief is the right word for how he feels. If anything, he’s been grieving for a long time. For four months, to be exact. It became a way of life, a stormcloud over his head. Never looking up, always looking down. His mother, who lingers over nothing, said _Dan, how long is this going to continue on?_ and Dan hadn’t really known how long a reasonable length of time was but that he tends to react to things differently from other people. Maybe. 

Cornelia had sent a further text to say _Sorry that we missed you today_ and Dan thinks _missed what_. Missed him sitting in a room silently while other people talk about their feelings, possibly. Missed him not participating in group activities. Not taking anything seriously but taking it very seriously at the same time, avoiding accidental honesty. Missed _that_.

\---

Dodie says, “I missed you.”

They’re writing poetry. Dodie’s poems are always beautiful yearning things that come with their own soundtracks. She looks at Dan expectantly as he blinks back at her. “You did?”

“Of course. I like talking to you.”

“You do?”

“You sound very surprised by that.”

“I’m not great company though, am I?”

Dodie looks surprised. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t participate. I don’t tell you anything about me.”

“But you listen. And that’s all that we’re here for, isn’t it? To be listened to.” Dodie writes a line with a flourish of her pen. “We’ll all listen to you when you’re ready, Dan. _I’ll_ listen especially hard.”

Dodie would believe in a bond. She might have mentioned it before. The peacock drawings all have glistening silver lines swooping from its wings and it makes sense that Dodie would see it that way - a fragile piece of string that could snap at any moment. 

Dan doesn’t write a single line of his poem but he manages to say, “Thank you Dodie,” which feels like a big step on its own. 

Cornelia doesn’t ask why he didn’t show up yesterday (and he hadn’t expected her to, she never pushes or questions anythings) but she asks him to stay behind and says, “I was very sorry to see that you weren’t here yesterday Dan,” while he moves his violin case shoulder to shoulder. “I know you’re not a huge fan of these sessions and what they can offer you, but -”

“I never said that.” Dan feels suddenly offended, not even on his own behalf. Offended for Cornelia maybe. “I’ve never said that at all.”

“I was glad to see that you came back today.”

“You thought I’d left?” Dan says. It wouldn’t be an unfair thing to think, based on how little he actually gets involved in anything. 

Cornelia doesn’t nod exactly but she inclines her head to show that she agrees.

“I wouldn’t leave.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Dan, because he wants Cornelia to be happy with him, because he doesn’t want her to think that he would have just stopped coming to her sessions even if that would have been a fair assessment to make, says, “Do you believe in a bond?” and it’s possibly the first question he’s ever truly asked her.

Cornelia says, “Yes.”

“You believe that they can break?”

“Physically, yes.”

“Not emotionally?”

“You can’t break emotions, Dan. Emotions are a feeling, they’re how you feel or how you felt at any given time. No one can break those and no one can take them from you. I think that it’s very easy to think that the bond breaking means that it was never there in the first place, but that’s just not true.”

Dan says, “Right.”

“Is there something in particular that you wanted to ask me?”

This is the part where Dan will say _no_ or _what were we talking about again?_ and keep going until the deflection has been successful. He resists the urge, leaving a longer pause than needed, and says, “My bond broke two days ago. I think. I know that’s not a question because there’s nothing really I want to ask you about it, or to ask _anyone_ about it. That’s just what happened.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“Like I’m the lesser part left behind?”

“You sound like you’re asking me that,” Cornelia says. “And if you are, then the answer is no. You’re not the lesser part left behind. No matter how beautiful and patient and wonderful your anima was, they’re a very small part of you. And it’s not the better part.”

“It’s just - It’s hard walking around without it. It’s hard _existing_ without it.”

Cornelia smiles at him. It’s not the usual therapist smile, it’s somehow warmer. “It gets easier. I can promise you that.”

\---

When Dan walks back into the library, the snow weasel trills at the top of its voice, like a trumpet heralding his entrance. Phil looks like he might trill too, a little louder. He says, “Dan!” happily and half-vaults over the counter. “I saved your desk and I put out the encyclopedias, and I can make you some coffee when you’re ready, and -”

Dan says, “I’m not going to need the encyclopedias. I - We can put them away. If that’s okay.”

Phil’s face does several complicated things but ends up on pride. He gets the trolley and they take the books back to where they came from, deep back in the archives on the lower level of the library, to three empty shelves covered with dust. Dan, in this entire time, must have been the only person to ever read them.

“You’re probably right.” Phil puts the first two volumes back. “I’ve never had anyone ask for them, and I don’t think Chris ever did either.”

“But why do you think that is?” 

“I don’t think people are interested in knowing why the animas exist.”

“Why? In case the answer is really boring?”

Phil laughs and then sneezes. The dust is floating around in clouds. “I think everyone likes to think there’s a beautiful reason for them being here and they don’t see the need to research it because they might prove themselves wrong. There’s only the need to question it when -” 

“When you lose one,” Dan supplies.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t lose it,” Dan says. “Well, I did, actually. I was careless with it, everyone said. It was a beautiful anima, Phil, you should have seen it. It was gold and it glowed and I think everyone thought that there was no possible way it could really have belonged to me, and after a while I thought so too. It never fit me, not like yours does, or like PJ’s does, or anyone else’s. And I wasn’t a great anima owner, I don’t think. It used to push me into rooms or to talk to people and I used to get annoyed with it because it wasn’t letting me just be by myself but I see - I get it now, what it was doing. I never let it fit me, really, I never - I feel like it could fit me better now, maybe, and I thought if I found it again I would be worthy of it. I wanted to be worthy of it, but - It got stolen from work. I’m not sure if I told you that. I never watched it properly, I never -”

“You haven’t told me that.” Phil rummages through his pockets and holds a crumpled tissue out to Dan. Dan stares back, confused, until he realises that he’s crying. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

“That’s the point though.” Dan sniffs. “I never tell anyone anything. I thought it was the best way to be but I don’t think it is.”

Phil says, “It’s okay,” and a lot of people have said that, in varying ways, but it’s possibly the first time that Dan has heard it and thought _maybe. Maybe it is_.

“It was a lynx,” he says. “A gold one.”

Phil pats at Dan’s upper arm, once, twice, and then holds on. “I would have liked to have seen it.”

“Lynxes and snow weasels live in the same climate. I don’t think they get on, necessarily, but they can stay together.”

Phil raises his eyebrows.

“I looked it up,” Dan says. “When I met you.”

R goes back on the shelf with the others, forever unread, and the blank notebook pages that he would have written on remain in the Thames with the dolphins and porpoises and the blue whales. He doesn’t feel disappointed in himself for this. Nineteen letters (A-Q and then S-T) had shown him nothing, but they were never going to. 

“I’ve been hiding,” he tells Phil. “In these books. In the corner of the library. In the orchestra, in therapy, _everywhere_. And I never let people try and find me.”

Phil leans forward, moving the empty book trolley with him. “I found you.”

“You’re different.”

“In a good way?”

“In the best way.”

Phil says, “Dan, no matter how beautiful and amazing your anima was, it doesn’t make you any less beautiful and amazing now that it’s gone. You’re both of those things, and more, on your own.”

Dan almost says _thank you_ and half-says _so are you_ even though it just comes out as, “So?” A question or a wish. _So what should we do about that? So what happens next? So what do we do now?_ There should be a next step, something that one of them says or does in the next beat. Dan remembers how this goes. He looks at Phil’s hands, knuckles white on the trolley handle, and the curve of his shoulders (snow weasel staring back), the absolute open sweetness of his face. He touches Phil’s jaw, catching the blush there, and says, “I was easier to be around before.”

Phil blushes even more, if that’s possible. “Were you?”

“Actually, I don’t know. I think it all gets really rose-tinted when I look back.”

“Then look forward instead.” 

“With you?”

Phil beams, smile so wide that Dan’s thumb catches the corner of his mouth. “Hopefully.”

Dan leans in, thinking that he’s going to kiss Phil; he’s still thinking it as he presses his forehead to Phil’s shoulder, turns his face into his neck. He can feel the snow weasel’s paws in his hair. Phil wraps one arm around his back and says, “You remember what I said, about how it feels when you touch my anima? That it feels like belonging?”

Dan mumbles, “I remember.”

“I felt that the first day you walked in. When I dropped all the books. I felt like someone had punched me in the chest but, like, in a good way. Like I was being given something.”

“You felt like someone had put something into your chest?”

“Like a really extreme version of my heart skipping a beat.”

\---

On Thursday his drawing actually looks like an animal (or like a cat, to be more precise). Dodie is almost speechless, or as close to speechless as Dodie can get. “Dan! It actually looks like something! It looks like a thing! What is it?”

Dan says, “It’s a thing,” and writes _Dan Howell: 26 and ¾_ in the bottom corner. 

“I knew it was a cat.” Dodie points to the ears. Dan has, for once, drawn them properly. “I knew it. Do you want some glitter?”

She has gold glitter in a tube. It’s bright but nowhere near bright enough. Dan says, “No, thank you,” and lets Cornelia put the drawing on the wall, on the provision that it’s not in the centre. 

When they leave at the end of the day Dan pats it, right in the centre of its pencil smudged forehead (like he used to do in real life). The lynx stares at him with lopsided eyes. Dan thinks _I’m sorry_ and _I hope_ , though he can’t quite finish what he hopes. People like to think you get reunited with your anima in the afterlife, if there is such a thing, reaching out for each other (like Achilles and Patroclus at the end of that too sad book), having waited for years to be reunited. The lynx might not recognise him. He might not recognise the lynx. They might be in a place surrounded by shade only looking at shadows of each other. Or it might be glorious sunshine (because shadows cannot last forever), sunlight on green grass, and Dan kneeling down to say _I found you. I knew that I would_.

Cornelia says, “A lynx,” the only person to have successfully guessed.

Dan nods. “Yes. I should have used the glitter.”

Cornelia touches the very bottom corner of the paper, over _Howell_. “The same as mine.” She moves her hand to Dan’s shoulder. “Maybe tomorrow you could get involved in the letter writing?”

Dan has never once got involved in the letter writing. Of all the activities it seems the saddest, the most pointless. Writing apologies to an anima that can’t read. He shrugs and Cornelia’s hand moves with the motion. 

She says, “It’s helpful. It helped me.”

“In my head your anima was an owl,” Dan tells her. “I don’t know why, I just thought it would be. And I suppose I could have just asked. Did anyone else ask?”

Cornelia says, “Everyone did,” careful to keep her tone kind.

“I should have. I’m sorry I didn’t, and I’m sorry that I haven’t been - That I’m not really an active participant in these things. I’m trying.”

She smiles. “Isn’t that all anyone’s doing?”

He supposes it is.

\---

Dan reads No Name (the next book in the list) while waiting for the rest of the orchestra to arrive. The search in this one appears to be for a missing fortune taken from two sisters, Norah (gentle and kind) and Magdalen (stormy and stubborn). Norah wants to move their lives forward. Magdalen wants to search. Dan understands the message in this one too, though he misses the dark haired Northern boys. The Phils.

He’s sat in one of the green chairs in the lobby when PJ and a collection of the brass section enter. PJ says, “Dan!” in delighted surprise. “You’re here. Here.”

None of the animas (robin, shetland pony, koala and rabbit) give Dan a second look. He misses the snow weasel. 

“You’re walking in with us?” PJ asks. His voice is light but his eyebrows are raised in an _are you okay?_ way. “Through the main doors?”

“I’m fine,” Dan replies, to a question PJ didn’t ask outright. “It’s about time that I walked in with you.”

PJ smiles and is still smiling when they walk back out two hours later. “I don’t know what’s brought this on exactly Dan, but I approve of it. Just so you know. I mean, I know you _know_ , but -” he scuffs his knuckles along Dan’s chin. “I’m proud of you. You know that. Do I say that enough? I’ll say it more.”

“You say it even when you don’t say it,” Dan says. “And I got more percussion, that’s all. Like you said.”

\---

Magdalen (who doesn’t find her fortune, that honour goes to Norah) eventually falls in love with a dark haired Northern boy who accepts her for all the stormy and stubborn things that she is. Dan says, “Message understood,” to Phil, who smiles at him from the other side of the counter. “I’ve only got one left.”

“Saved the best for last,” Phil replies. 

“You’ll have to recommend me another five.”

Phil shakes his head. “Those were the best ones I could think of for books about finding things.”

“And what type of _things_ would that be?”

“Dark haired Northern boys, mainly.” The snow weasel trills and it sounds like a laugh. “And, uh, yourself, I guess. If you really want me to be cheesy about it.”

Dan says, “I found myself. I hadn’t gone far.”

“Glad to hear it.” 

“And, well, they’ve all been about looking for something but realising that you were enough all along. Which I’ve maybe been struggling with. A bit.”

Phil looks up at Dan, as if looking through the fringe that isn’t there anymore. “Are you still struggling now?”

“I don’t think so. Which, that’s not to say that I never _will_ again, but - I think it’s getting better. It’s gotten better. Thank you.”

Phil says, “What are you thanking _me_ for?” and both he and the snow weasel laugh with their tongues to their teeth. “I haven’t done anything.”

Dan says, “Would you like to -”

Phil instantly says, “Yes.”

“I hadn’t even thought of the end to that question.” Dan wants to add _because there’s too much I want to say_ and so he does. “Because there’s too much I want to say. There’s too much I want to ask.”

Phil beams (or he more than beams, he _glows_ ). “That’s okay. We’ve got plenty of time. There’s one thing I can’t wait for though.”

Dan hopes he’s guessed what that might be. “What?”

Phil launches himself over the counter, propped on his elbows, and kisses him. It’s coupled with the sounds of falling books, several metallic sounding things hitting the floor and the happy chirping of the snow weasel. Phil puts one hand in Dan’s hair and half loses his balance. Dan has to grab at his waist to stop him falling over the counter and they end up laughing into each other’s mouths but - It’s perfect. Dan wouldn’t change a thing about it.

Dan leans back. Phil leans with him, pressing his forehead to Dan’s and saying “Finally,” as though he’s been waiting for lifetimes, _eternities_ , for Dan to show up. Like he’s been searching for a really long time.

Dan, who knows exactly what that feels like, repeats, “Finally?”

Phil smiles. “I’ve been waiting for a while. Pushing that trolley back and forth by your desk -”

Dan says, “I knew it.”

“ - buying all those candles, giving you books, pretty much never doing my actual job when you’re here because how can I do anything when there’s you, and just - Finally is right. I really thought - I _thought_ but I wasn’t sure and you sometimes looked so sad that I just wanted to -” he mimes lifting something from Dan’s shoulders, a invisible weight under his fingertips. “I just wanted.”

“I’m really bad at admitting that I want things,” Dan admits. “Or saying what I mean about anything really. But I’m getting better at it.”

“So, what do you -”

Dan says, “You.”

Phil smiles. When Dan smiles back he touches both dimples one after the other. “I didn’t finish the -”

“You didn’t need to. That’s the answer to whatever the question was.”

A girl at the counter clears her throat in a very polite way (her anima, a huge badger that reaches her knees, echoes the sound). Phil says, “Oh!” surprised to be reminded that he’s actually at work. “Right! Sorry!”

Dan helps Phil back over the desktop, a few more books falling in his wake, and then walks to his corner (the sound of Phil desperately trying to fill awkward silence behind him). The snow weasel bumps against the backs of his shoes and then hops into his lap when he sits down. Dan lets it rub its head against his knuckles and mumbles, “I don’t get why you pay attention to me when no other anima does.”

The snow weasel looks incredulous.

Dan starts to think _not even my anima paid me this much attention_ but he stops because it isn’t true. Now the clouds are lifting he can admit that it’s not. His anima had loved him in the same majestic way that it did everything. He didn’t believe or feel worthy of it when he should have done both of those things. 

“I could have done better,” he tells the snow weasel. It tilts its head to one side. “I really could have. I mean, that’s a theme for me, but maybe not anymore. I was looking for something I was never going to find and found something else instead. I know that sounds -”

The snow weasel chirps, like it’s laughing.

“I’m writing a letter. And then maybe a poem. And I’ll draw a hundred pictures with glitter and go to all the one-to-ones, and I’m going to sit in front of everyone and talk about myself.”

Phil, suddenly at his side, says, “That sounds great.” Dan looks up at him. Phil adds, “I scared the customer away, I think. Or _we_ did.”

“We’re the only ones here?”

Phil looks around as if other library goers are about to pop out from behind all the bookshelves. “Yep.”

Dan says, “Lock up early and come home with me.”

Phil, instantly says, “Yes.”

He drops the keys three times while trying to shut the doors. Dan, trying to help, ends up only knocking them back out of Phil’s hands while Phil says _Stop, I’m nervous_ and Dan says _Nervous of what?_ because all possible answers to that question seem impossible.

“Of you,” Phil replies, waving his hand from Dan’s hair to feet. “And your everything.” 

Dan kisses him, fists curled in yet another one of Phil’s bright summer jackets. The keys get dropped again. Phil smiles and Dan feels every bit of it. He looks up. The library has two spires and a huge stained glass window in blues and greens. He says, “Hey, the outside of the library is really pretty.”

Phil says, “What?” against Dan’s neck.

“I never looked at it before.”

Phil blinks, eyelashes tickling Dan’s skin. “Never?”

“I never really looked up before.”

“You’re looking up now?”

Dan nods. Phil disentangles himself and finally manages to lock the doors. 

Dan looks at the roofs and windows of every building they pass, the ice covered wisterias and the flower boxes, the lights and the posters. He looks into the faces of everyone who steps around him on the pavement (so much so that he gets a few awkward _good evenings_ in response). He looks at every anima (the monkeys and pandas climbing up the walls, the panthers and polar bears at people’s feet, the chirping of thirty different birds). 

Phil, shivering under his too-thin coat, says, “You’ve seen it all before.” 

“Not for _months_. I’ve been looking at the floor the entire time.” Dan grabs one of Phil’s hands, curls both his gloved ones around it. “Why do you never dress for the weather? It’s not permanently spring.”

“I can pretend that it is.” Phil looks at their joined hands. “It will be soon, for real. It can’t keep snowing forever.”

The garden outside Dan’s building is covered with snow (actual snow, not like the grey attempts that cover the pavements), untouched because no one in any of the flats has actually walked in it (everyone, including Dan, had kept to the neatly cleared path). The snow weasel instantly takes off and starts burrowing in one of the drifts. 

One of Dan’s neighbours has hung fairy lights around their balcony, casting violet shadows into Phil’s hair as he leans down to pet the snow weasel. Dan says, “You could come to therapy with me. If you wanted to.”

“Would _you_ want me to?”

“At some point.”

“Then I’d be honoured to.”

“And you could come to my recital next week. We still don’t know what it’s about but, it could be - I’d want you to be there. I never have anyone in the family and friends section.”

“We’ll both be there.” Phil gestures to the snow weasel, now rolling what looks like a tiny snowball between its paws. It appears to understand the question and blinks up at Dan. “I was going to research what it means, that it’s so interested in you and why I feel when you touch it, but -”

“But?”

“I think I’m happy not overthinking it.”

“I’m really bad at not overthinking,” Dan says. “Like, you need to tell me to stop if you see that I’m doing it.”

“I won’t tell you to stop,” Phil replies. “I’ll just ask you to tell me about it.”

Dan feels momentarily blindsided, everything on pause (lights bouncing from the snow into Phil’s hair, the cold making his cheeks pink). No one has ever responded to that with anything other than _stop worrying_ or _there’s nothing to overthink about_. People usually want to fix Dan, to mend some tiny part of him that just doesn’t react to things like they say he should. Phil doesn’t want to do that. Phil, he realises, wants him exactly the way that he is.

(Or he doesn’t _realise_ it, as such. He already knew it, had known it every time he walked into the library and was met with a chorus of falling books. He just hadn’t entirely believed it).

“Are you going to invite me in?” Phil says. His voice is cheerful but there’s an element of doubt on his face. As if there’s any possible chance that Dan would say _no, I changed my mind_. “It’s freezing out here.”

“You’re the one who wore a denim jacket.” Dan steps back into the path.

Phil says, “Hey,” and touches the side of Dan’s jaw. His fingers are like ice but Dan turns into the feel of it anyway. “I should tell you something. Properly. Before we -” he nods towards the front door. “I should tell you that I was going to hide the last volume of the encyclopedias so that you’d keep coming to the library. I should tell you that I still have about fifty cinnamon candles. And that I never really needed to restock the shelves near your desk that much. And that I _was_ going to research, about my anima and you, but I think I just like to think that there’s a new bond, a different bond, between us. Me and you. Because I love you. A little bit. A lot. You asked me why once, you remember? You said _why_ and I don’t think I gave you a great answer and I probably still can’t because I ramble a lot. I’m rambling now. But, I love you.”

Dan smiles. Phil’s thumb immediately moves to the dimple that appears. “A little bit?”

“A _lot_.”

“I’m terrible at saying what I mean, and I really _do_ overthink a lot of time, and I really didn’t expect that I’d ever start looking up again. Or do anything that I’d stopped. But, then you were there and - This is me saying that I love you a little bit too. Sorry. I’m not great with -”

Phil presses his lips to the hinge of Dan’s jaw, then the space just under his ear, and the finally the crescent moon of his dimple. “We’re going inside now, right?”

They do. Phil doesn’t frown at the mismatched grey and silver, or all of the empty spaces between the furniture. He tries to play the violin (badly, Dan hadn’t thought it was capable of making a noise like that) and stares at everything like he’s trying to picture Dan there by himself. Or Dan there with a lynx possibly. “I wondered,” he says. “What your flat was like. Or what you did when you weren’t in the library.”

“Here it is.” Dan weakly throws his arms out. “Not very homely, like I said.”

Phil says, “I like it,” and, “I always think home isn’t really a place. You can find one for yourself anywhere if you look.”

“I suppose I wasn’t looking before.”

“You’re looking now though?”

Dan looks at Phil. “Yes.”

\---

The final book in Phil’s list, one that ends up being knocked from Dan’s bedside table and only discovered when Dan trips over it in the morning, is The Count of Monte Cristo.

It’s a huge doorstop of a book that bruises Dan’s toes and that Phil apologetically says, “But it’s really good,” about. “I should have put it first.”

Tripping over the book had only happened because Phil had set off the fire alarm in the kitchen while attempting to make breakfast. The snow weasel shrieked in a perfect imitation until Dan eventually removed the batteries. They end up eating burnt toast and strong coffee while Phil smiles giddily across the table at him.

Dan, who is probably smiling right back, holds the book up. “So what’s it about?”

Phil thinks. “Revenge, I suppose. Trying really hard to get back something that was taken from you but then realising that maybe you had what you needed anyway. But set in eighteenth century Paris with, like, duels and poisoning and fake death and stuff.” 

“And the lead character is a bit sad and lonely?”

“Not at the end. I think he sails away into the sunset actually.”

“With a cute dark haired Northern boy?”

“I ran out of books about dark haired Northerners, sorry. You’re getting the real thing instead.”

Phil makes him play the violin before he leaves for therapy ( _whatever your favourite music is, please, just pick anything_ ) and Dan has to pause because it’s been a long time since he picked music because it was his favourite, but he eventually plays Bach. One of the partitas. If Tchaikovsky sounds like crying then Bach sounds like singing: someone directing their voice up to the sky, so pure it could shatter glass. Phil and the snow weasel sit in front of him, and when he finishes, Phil looks a little misty eyed. 

“I normally play on my own in the flat,” Dan says, apologetically. “It’s usually -”

“Not anymore,” Phil says, followed by, “Wow. I just - wow, Dan.”

Dan wants to stay in his flat for the first time in months. He actually wants to sit on the grey sofa and look at his grey bookshelves, and maybe move the furniture around now so there’s not so much space. He wants to sit with Phil and play him all the music he wants, to read all the books, as if Phil will disappear as soon as he walks out of the door. 

But he also knows (with hope that is slowly starting again, the gentle reformation of his battered heart) that Phil won’t. That he will walk back into the library later and Phil will see him and knock over a pile of books (and then hover around Dan’s desk) and Dan will know, does know, that he loves him.

“I’m going to be late,” he says. “Cornelia hates that. I said I’d write a letter to my anima today, everyone else has.”

Phil raises his eyebrows at _Cornelia_ but doesn’t comment. “You’ll come to the library later?”

“Of course.”

“You could bring your letter. You don’t have to. But, just, if you wanted me to read it.”

“We usually tear them up.” There’s a whole big ceremony. They take them outside and throw papers away on the wind. “It’s like we’re delivering them. Apparently.”

“Then make sure that you do that.”

They take the lift downstairs with a man who must be Mr. Winter and his goldfish, clutched in a bowl under his arm. He notices Dan’s violin case and smiles. Dan gives what he hopes is an apologetic sorry-about-all-the-sad-music shrug. 

They part ways at the gate. Phil kisses Dan’s cheek (very chastely, like an invitation to dance) and Dan runs his palm down Phil’s arm and then down the snow weasel’s back. Phil sighs deeply and says, “I’m never going to get used to that.”

\---

_to my anima (because that’s apparently how we have to start these things. i never named you, some people do, i’ve never met anyone but i read about them when i was researching. but i’ll tell you about the research later. i don’t know what i would have named you, what would have fit? you were too perfect for any name really so i’ll just keep you at that: my anima)._

_it was my fault you got stolen. everyone knows it but they’re too nice to say so. you know how it happened, do i need to write it down? would that be therapeutic? i don’t know. what i do know is it was my fault. i didn’t look after you the way i should have done. i think i was jealous of you, which is weird because you were a part of me. i’ve read a lot about animas recently and i know everyone has different theories on what they are but i believe that you chose me for a reason and that you were some part of me. i didn’t used to. i thought you must have picked the wrong house, i thought that you were making fun of me, because i was a too tall too emo too weird kid with a huge gold lynx and who decided that really. and i assumed that all the decent parts of me were in you and i hated both you and me for that._

_maybe not so much you though. i loved you a lot. you remember how you would sit and listen to me play the violin. or everytime you would try and get under the piano. when you would push me forward into rooms. and how you would just show your teeth to anyone who was rude to me and when you’d get excited and push your nose against my hands. i forgot all of those things because i was too focused on not deserving you. i tried to look for you, it’s important that you know that._

_i don’t think all the decent parts of me were only in you anymore. i had them too. I had them all along. i should have just looked. and i should have said “yes it is” instead of “is it?” when people told me how beautiful you were._

_i was a terrible anima owner (if that’s even the right phrase). if you turned up at my door again (please do if you can) i would be better. i promise. i hope you didn’t miss me, wherever you went. i hope you didn’t feel the bond break. and i hope we see each other again somewhere. i think you might be surprised when you see me. i’m improving some things (things meaning me)._

_Your human, Dan._

“Are you ready to send it Dan?” Cornelia asks. “You can go first.”

They’re stood on the common next to the little village hall where the therapy sessions take place facing down the hillside towards the city. Everyone is holding their letters to their chests except for Dodie, who has hers clenched tightly in her fist. 

Dan says, “Ready,” and tears his letter into disjointed pieces. One falls into the melting snow at his feet where daisies are trying to grow. The rest instantly catch the wind and are taken above his head, a whirlpool that swirls for a second before they separate and are taken up and away. 

Dodie puts her letter into her pocket and sniffs. “I don’t send them,” she says. “I’m saving them for when it comes back.”

Dan touches her wrist. “That’s okay.”

“I hope your - your anima gets your letter though.”

“It was a lynx,” Dan corrects her. “A gold one.”

Dodie laughs a wet sounding laugh. “I knew it. I _guessed_ that. It suits you.”

Dan, startled, says, “Thank you,” and Dodie grabs hold of his hand and squeezes.

Everyone’s letters get thrown. They go the furthest that they’ve ever gone apparently, the wind being strong and taking every single paper up high. High enough to reach wherever their collection of lost animas are waiting. Dan retrieves his left behind piece (it says _you_ ) and launches it upwards.

\---

The music is called “Searching for a Missing Anima” which makes so much sense, with half of the orchestra unused and the slow adagio into nothing, that Dan can’t even act surprised when PJ whispers it to him at the start of rehearsal. “And she’s here!” PJ continues. “She just appeared and wanted to hear how it’s sounding and I’m not _prepared_.”

The robin (back on PJ’s fringe) beats its wings furiously. 

Dan turns to look back into the auditorium and sees a small figure dressed all in grey with huge dark framed glasses. He raises his hand and she gives a small wave back.

“You know her?” PJ hisses. “How?”

“How do you _think?_ ”

“Oh, right, obviously. But I - Are you going to be okay to play this? Now you know what it’s about?”

Dan says, “Of course.”

PJ gives him a considering look. “I’m glad that you’re my friend, Dan. And that you’re second violin even though you’re better than me. And I’m proud of everything you’ve done. I didn’t say that back to you when you said it the other week and I know - when it happened, we were all here when it happened, and - you’re not half an orchestra, you know?”

“I know.”

“It makes me sad that she thinks that she is.”

Dan looks at Dodie, folded so small into her seat that you wouldn’t notice her unless you were looking. “She’ll get there. I know it.” 

“You do?”

“I know it’s possible.”

PJ smiles. The robin chirps and pats its feet. The shetland pony immediately sets about chewing one of Dan’s spare bows, making up for lost time. PJ says, “Let’s make it sound good for her then.”

Dan says, “Let’s make it sound _amazing_.”

\---

He walks to the library looking at the sky. It doesn’t look heavy with oncoming snow anymore - there are hints of blue. A promise of sun. The ice across the pavement is almost gone. The elephant across the street from the library trumpets happily.

The library itself smells like cinnamon. The candles are back, one on every desk and every shelf, ten across the check-in counter. Phil, seeing him, instantly crashes the book trolley into one of the cabinets. “Dan.”

Dan says, “Phil.”

There are more people in the library than usual so Dan settles for just touching two fingers to Phil’s cheek where the inevitable flush of pink is beginning. Phil says, “I saved your desk.”

“It’s okay. I’ll sit near the front instead.” Dan rummages in one of his coat pockets before finding what he’s looking for. “Here’s a ticket to my recital, if you wanted to come.”

Phil repeats, “If I wanted to come?” in a mystified way before reading, “Searching for a Missing Anima?”

“We found out that it’s called that today.”

“You’re okay with that?”

Dan says, “Yes,” and means it. 

“Did you write your letter?”

Dan nods. The snow weasel unfurls itself from its usual place around Phil’s neck and reaches out a paw. Phil holds his arm out and lets it run over to Dan’s shoulder. Phil says, “It’s fine, I’m just going to - It likes you. I’m going to let it do what it wants.”

Dan pushes his chin gently into the snow weasel’s soft fur and says, “Okay.”

“How did you feel, after the letter? How do you feel _now_?”

Dan feels, somehow, like he’s taken a weight from his heart and thrown that along with the torn up paper, is standing beneath it and watching it evaporate. It feels like the opposite of a bond breaking. All of the broken pieces that he couldn’t quite collect are suddenly gathered safely in his hands. He doesn’t feel like half of anything. 

He says, “Whole.”

**Author's Note:**

> The music Dan plays is as follows:
> 
> [Johanne Brahms - Sonata No 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNEICX5H8ck)  
> [Jules Massenet - Meditation from Thais for Violin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QtGOWemQhY)  
> [Edvard Grieg - Holberg Suite, Op. 40, Rigaudon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGAVDqel2hQ)  
> [Pyotr Tchaikovsky - Concerto, 2nd Movement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7daQ3KomvsY)  
> [Johann Sebastian Bach - Partita No.2 - Chaconne](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAMK3kiz5c)
> 
> And the books, to confirm, are:
> 
> The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett  
> The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt  
> The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller  
> No Name - Wilkie Collins  
> The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas  
> 
> 
> You can see the beautiful art that inspired this fic [here.](http://hunnyhowlter.tumblr.com/post/173875593709/phandom-reverse-bang-in-short-dan-looses-his)
> 
> [(i'm on tumblr ](http://hunnyhowlter.tumblr.com/post/173875593709/phandom-reverse-bang-in-short-dan-looses-his)[here](http://www.leblonde.tumblr.com), come and say hi!)


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